Jennette Lee

“ Gabrielle Eaton, walking across the great meadow, lifted her face to the sky. She had come out from faculty meeting tired and depressed and longing for a breath of air. The meeting had droned through its three interminable hours of detail and bickering. Little dried-up morsels of men had argued and plotted and counterplotted over the mental and spiritual food that should be served out to vigorous, growing girls. ”

“ Harben. She smiled a little. But there were other things that drew one aside—respectability, convention, timidity, even curiosity. Had she not known them all! She had shrunk from a life of unfulfilment almost with a fierce repulsion. Then her dream had shimmered, and she had followed it. And it had no shape or color or name; only the forward walk into the dark.
The college buildings came in sight, crude, ugly in line, built for use—to shelter the spirits of growing girls! ”

“ How was one to bear a life that choked and stifled at every turn? For twelve years she had been teaching girls, and each year she came to feel less certain of what was best for them, what to give, and what to withhold. And Professor Harben's small, round, intelligent face in spectacles, with its pointed beard spearing at knowledge, flashed before her. He had no doubts as to what was best for the young. In his flat, thin voice he had talked for half an hour, explaining, elaborating, systematizing ways of educating girls. ”

“ She was aware of a desire to free the room of his presence. There was something disturbing in the big man who sat so easily opposite her, looking appreciatively about the room, at the book-lined walls and the bits of soft color and the great dish of roses in the center of the table. He moved a hand to them.
"Wonderful color!" he said.
"Yes; one of my girls brought them. They are really too many for this small table." She looked at them critically. "If you don't mind my getting up?"
He nodded with amused glance. ”

“ Then his glance traveled about the perfect room and he smiled.
"Now you will be selfish for me," he said. "I may not always be able to live up to your selfishness; but I want it."
And all the perfect room seemed a little shocked. But Gabrielle Eaton laughed quietly. ”

“ Her voice had a welcoming sound, and the group of girls in the open door came forward as if the room with the woman sitting by the fire, her hands folded in her lap, were a wonted and happy place. They grouped about her, on chairs or cushions, or on the floor by the fire, all centering toward her with unconscious ease. Sometimes in the physicist's laboratory a magnet will make pretty patterns of the bits of steel it passes over. ”

“ Harben's eyes, she caught a glimpse of something that startled her—something akin to this force in herself that drove her, stripped and desolate and searching.
So some women were false to it, as a man might be false to the vision when he turned aside to work for money? ”

“ Then the voices drifted away, and John Fairchild's eye twinkled a little. His fingers had barely touched the end of the cigar that rested in his waistcoat pocket. He glanced about him with a little shake of the head and settled more comfortably in his chair.
Her quick glance noted the movement with a look of surprise. He was evidently expecting to stay! But the quiet restfulness in his face touched some chord in her, and she moved the drop-light a little and took up the knitting that lay beside it.
"Would you like to smoke?" she asked casually. ”

“ Harben, small and flat-chested, with the three little Harbens about her, was trying to I make two thousand dollars do the work of four in the college community.
And men whose business enterprises affected a continent and involved millions intrusted the care of their daughters, the discipline and nurture of their minds, the training of their bodies, to Professor Harbens—to men to whom in their business they would have hesitated to trust the care of office buildings. ”