The first extract refers to her "discovery" that she was almost entirely without fear. The heroine is Hildeguard Forrest, a woman of thirty-seven, a High School teacher. During a boating accident, which might have resulted fatally, the fact reveals itself to Hildeguard that she does not know what fear is. The story of the accident closes with these words: "Self-revelation is not usually a pleasant process. Not often do we find ourselves better than we expected. Usually the sudden flash that shows us ourselves makes us blush with shame at the sight we see. But very rarely, and for the most part for the people who are not self-conscious, the flash may, in a moment, reveal unknown powers or unsuspected strength. "And Hildeguard, sitting back in the boat, suddenly realized she wasn't a coward. She looked back in surprise over her life, and remembered that the terror which as a child would seize her in a sudden emergency was the fear of being parted from her mother, not any personal fear for herself, or her own safety. "Such a pleasurable glow swept over her as she sat there in the rocking boat. 'Why, no,' she thought; 'I wasn't frightened.'" A similar accident befell Elsie Inglis when a young woman. Whether the absence of fear disclosed itself to her then or not cannot be said, but she is known to have said to a friend after her return from Serbia: "It was a great day in my life when I discovered that I did not know what fear was." Benjamin Kidd in _The Science of Power_ gives (unintentionally) an indication where to look for the secret of the childless woman's feeling of loneliness--_she has no link with the future_. He affirms that woman because of her very nature has her roots in the future. "To women," he says, "the race is always more than the individual; the future greater than the present." As we follow Hildeguard through the pages of the novel, she is shown to us as faced with the problem of becoming "a lonely woman," the problem that meets the unmarried and the childless woman. And the claims and the meaning of religion are confronting her too. The story traces the workings of Hildeguard's mind and the events of her life for a year. Christmas Day in the novel finds Hildeguard a lonely and dissatisfied woman with no "sure anchor." She has had a happy childhood, with many relations and friends around her. One by one these are taken from her--some are dead, others are married--and she sees herself, at the age of thirty-seven, a forlorn figure with no great interest in the future, and her thoughts dwelling mostly on the joyous past. Two or three of Hildeguard's friends are conversing together in her rooms. None of them has had a happy day. Each in her own way is feeling the depression of the lonely woman. Frances, a little Quaker lady, enters the room, as someone remarks on the sadness of Christmas-time.