Minola rose next morning with a bewildering and oppressed sense of disappointment and defeat. The whole of her scheme of life had broken down. Her little bubble world had burst. All her plans of bold independence and of contented life, of isolation from social trammels, and freedom from woman's weaknesses, had broken down. She had always thought scorn of those who said that women could not feel friendship for men without danger of feeling love--and now, what was she but a cruel, mocking evidence of the folly of her confidence? Alas, no romantic schoolgirl could have fallen more suddenly into love than Minola had done. There was but one man whom she had ever seen with whom she had coveted a friendship, and she now knew, only too well, that in her breast the friendship had already caught fire and blazed into love. Where was Alceste now, and the Alceste standard by which she had proposed to test all men and women, well convinced beforehand that she would find them wanting? She could not even flatter herself that she had been faithful to her faith, and that if she had succumbed at the very outset, it was because the first comer actually proved to be an Alceste. No, she could not cram this complacent conviction into her mind. Victor Heron was a generous and noble-hearted young man, she felt assured; but she had not fallen in love with him because of any assurance that he was like the hero of her girlhood. She made no attempt to deceive herself in this way. In her proud resentment of her weakness she even trampled upon it with undeserved scorn. "I fell in love with him," she said to herself, "just as the silliest girl falls in love--because he was there, and I couldn't help it." It was not merely Lucy's revelation which had forced upon Minola a knowledge of her own feelings. This had perhaps so sent conviction home as to render illusion or self-deception impossible any longer, but it was not that which first told her of her weakness. That had long been more and more making itself known to her. It was plain to her now that since the first day when she stood upon the bridge with him in the park, and looked into the canal, she had loved him. "Oh, why did I not know it then?" she asked wearily of herself. "I could have avoided him--have never seen him again--and it might so have come to nothing, and at least we should not have to meet."