Lorenzo sat watching her. A curious white look passed over his face. He felt for the moment that he hardly ought to dare hope that this girl who was so full of help for all should narrow her field of labor to just him. "You'll end by being like Dinah in _Adam Bede_," he said, trying to laugh; "you like to teach and preach, don't you?" "I don't know," said Jane; "it's always there, right on my heart and lips. I feel as if the personal 'I' was only its voice." "I don't think she's exactly human," said Susan meditatively; "she doesn't strike me so." "Don't say that, Auntie," said the young girl quickly; "I want to be human more than anything else. I don't want to make you or anybody feel that I'm not. It would be as dreadfully lonely to be looked upon as unhuman as to be looked upon as inhuman. I want to work and love and be loved." "But you're so different from everybody else," said her aunt. "But I don't want to be different. I want to just be a woman--or a girl." Some kindly intuition prompted Susan to change the subject. "Mr. Rath and I were talking about girls just now; we both thought what a pity it is that there are so few in these days." "I guess there are just as many girls as ever, only they aren't so conspicuous," Jane said, laughing at Lorenzo. "I think they're more conspicuous," said Lorenzo, "only they're the wrong kind." "I liked the old kind," said Susan, "the kind that stayed at home and wasn't wild to get away and be going into business." Jane laughed again. "You ought not to blame the girls, Auntie. Lots of them feel dreadfully over leaving home. But they have to go out and work. I had to, I know. It's some kind of big world-change that's pushing us all on into different places." "I wasn't thinking of girls who do something nice and quiet like you. I was thinking of the others." "They have to go, too," said Jane. "There's a fearful pressure that we don't understand behind it all. A restlessness and discontent that no one can alter." "Yes, that's true," said Lorenzo; "I never thought of it, but I can see that it is so now that you've put it into my head." "I've seen a lot of it. It's curious that it seems to come equally to women who want to work and to women who don't. I'm sure I never wanted to earn my living, but I was forced to it. And ever so many others are, too. It's rather an awful feeling that you're in the grip of a power that sweeps your life beyond your guidance. I'm trying hard to be big enough to live in this century, but I'd have liked the last better." "Don't you consider that there's anything voluntary in the way women are acting now?" Lorenzo asked, with real interest.