n the upper walks of life the balance was
more nearly even than on planes where there existed scantier
opportunities for development. There was no question that Victoria
Gwynne was made on a magnificent plan, as capable of heroism, no doubt,
as any of the salient women of history. She was an ornament in her
world, useful, sympathetic, the author of much good, a devoted and
inspiring mother. And yet there was no more question that this Frenchman
was the last of a long line of favored adorers than that Victoria, for
all her individualities, was but a type of her kind: a kind that was
sufficiently distinct from the hundreds of wholly estimable women that
were proud to know her, or accepted her as a matter of course.

And even these good women? Had they not the same passions, the same
inclinations in the secrecies of their souls? What was the determining
cause of their indisputable virtue? A happy marriage? Too many children?
Timidity? Absence of temptation? Or were they merely orthodox through a
more uneven balancing of their qualities, the animal in abeyance? For
this very reason were they not frequently narrow, unsympathetic,
unuseful--unless, indeed, they were of the few who, with the mighty
temptations of the Victoria Gwynnes, were mightier still in their
fidelity to some inner and cherished ideal. This lofty ideal of
womanhood Isabel had unconsciously set up in her soul, and the sudden
conviction of its imperfection was, after all, the reason of her sudden
despair. For the soul with its immemorial and often incommunicable
knowledge may have its moments of terror while the mind wonders.

And she was disheartened at the sense of insignificance and
mortification inspired by this contact with a side of life, as real and
consequent as motherhood or government, instead of feeling merely
repelled, infinitely superior in her unstained maidenhood. She had no
wish to emulate, but neither did she relish feeling provincial, a chit,
an outsider. Her youthful vanity had its way in a mind too speculative,
intelligent, observant, merely to be shocked. Her memory reverted to
experiences that had made her feel as much older than the ordinary girl
as she now felt at sea. What was she, Isabel Otis, after all? She felt a
mere assortment of fluids, which might or might not crystallize into
some such being as she had dimly apprehended, or into something quite
commonplace; realized with a shock that her own deep personal experience
had left