During these long pilgrimages Ora, even while attending school in New York, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Vevey, had seen something of society, for Mrs. Stratton was ever surrounded by it, and did not approve of the effect of boarding school diet on the complexion. But the ardours of her mind, encouraged always by her father, who never was too busy to write to her, had made her indifferent to the advantages prized by Mrs. Stratton. Today she was conscious of a keen rebellious desire for something more frivolous, light, exciting, than had entered her life for many a year. There can be little variety and no surprises in the social life of a small community--for even scandal and divorce grow monotonous--and although she could always enjoy an hour’s intellectual companionship with the professors of the School of Mines, whenever it pleased her to summon them, Ora, for the first time in her twenty-six years, had drifted into a condition of mind where intellectual revels made no appeal to her whatever. She had wondered before this if her life would have been purely mental had her obligations been different, but had dismissed the thought as not only dangerous but ungrateful. She had reason to go on her knees to her intellect, its ambitions and its furniture, for without it life would have been insupportable. She ordered her quickening ego back to the rear, or the depths, or wherever it bided its time, none too amenable; she was only beginning to guess the proportions it might assume if encouraged; the vague phantoms floating across her mind, will-o’-the-wisps in a fog bank, frightened her. Several months since she had set her lips, and her mind the task of acquiring the Russian language. It had always been her experience that nothing compared with a new language as a mental usurper. She had entered into a deliberate partnership with a man who protected and supported her, and she would keep the letter, far as its spirit might be beyond the reach of her will. Even were she to become financially independent, it was doubtful if she would leave him for a long period; and for New York and its social diversions she cared not at all. What she wanted was adventure--she stumbled on the word, and stopped with a gasp. Adventure. For the first time she wished she were a man. She would pack two mules with a prospector’s outfit and disappear into the mountains.