“I’ll go to Miss C—— to-night after lessons and tell her I’d rather not have it, as I don’t care for prizes.” Having decided in her mind she began to screw her courage up to the right pitch. But Jane came to her and began again lamenting her loss of the prize. “Well,” said Deborah, for somehow or other she felt sorry for her, “you need not bother. I will not take the prize in any case—I don’t quite believe in them.” “Do you mean to say if they offered it to you, you would not take it?” “Yes.” Jane went away. Later in the evening she entered the room and went straight to Deborah. “_I_ am first on the list, _you_ are only second,” she cried, and walked off without waiting for any reply. That night when Deborah went upstairs the dormitory was empty. She turned the light up and drew her curtain and prepared for bed. Suddenly there was a great rush of feet down the stone stairs and Deborah’s curtain was swirled back with a rattle. “Do you know who’s got the composition prize?” exclaimed half a dozen voices. “Jane.” “Who told you?” “She did.” “It’s like her impudence,” remarked one young lady. “It’s shameful,” observed another. “She never wrote half so well as you did.” “No, I know,” said Deborah, and she looked round at the girl who spoke, and laughed. “Are you going to make a fuss about it?” asked another. “Oh, no. I ought to be thankful to her. She has really spared me the unpleasant position of posing. In any case I would not have taken the prize.” No amount of sympathising or expostulating could draw another word out of her, so at last they went away. But all that night, till the silence bell rang, other girls came running in with the same cry. Long after silence and darkness reigned Deborah sat on the side of the bed, and a fight which was bitter and hot was raging inside her. “You are too conceited,” urged an even voice in her ear. “You imagine you write much better than you do. It is no good thinking you are unjustly treated; the prizes here are given as fairly as possible, and it is only the disappointed students who raise the hue-and-cry.” “I know,” said Deborah, and sat silent. “Besides, you have no gift that way,” the voice went on. “And it’s time you learnt it. You’ve had five more rejections within the last eighteen months—not to speak of those before entering college, and it ought to have taught you to understand your proper place better.” “I know.” “You have no talent except what is very mediocre. You are worthy only of a second prize, and not perhaps of that.” The sense of injustice came burning hot and strong, and she clenched her two hands in profitless anger. “Then why, if I have no talent, have they always said my essays are different from all the rest? Why have those governesses, who have nothing to do with the subject, congratulated me on them? Why have they always been read, and why—”