Miss Colbourne was not given to sentiment; she was a woman who had faced the world and earned her own living for thirty years, and was not quickly moved by any sudden impulse of compassion. Neither was she one to grasp at her own advantage. Had it been merely her own pleasure she was asked to sacrifice, she would have done it willingly. It was characteristic that this aspect of the question did not trouble her. In her heart she knew well that this was her last opportunity of realising her dreams: never again would she possess the necessary funds; youth had gone, health and strength were both on the wane. To give up now meant to give up for life. She realised this, but it did not move her; it hurt her, but it did not shake her purpose. It was not her own pleasure that she hesitated to relinquish; it was rather a question of her duty to herself. Miss Colbourne took life very seriously, and lived up to a delicately poised standard of right and wrong. She had a few months before refused an invitation to a performance of the _Agamemnon_, because she did not consider her knowledge of Greek equal to its perfect comprehension, and she would not pose as a Greek scholar. The pleasure the spectacle would have given her was not allowed to influence her decision. In the same way now she hesitated whether she ought to give up this opportunity of widening and enriching her mind, cramped by narrow horizons at home. The months she dreamed of spending abroad would not only increase her mental stores, but send her back with enlarged and quickening powers to her pupils. “Where,” she debated, “does one’s duty to one’s higher nature leave off and that to one’s neighbour begin? Shall I not be a more useful member of society if I go abroad, and ought I not to consider my work first?” In her pacings she picked up one of the views that had dropped from the portfolio and carried it back to its place. It was a quaint representation of the bonfire of vanities. She handled her treasures tenderly, and with her handkerchief wiped an imaginary speck of dust from Savonarola’s medallion. As she did so she wondered whether the great ascetic would have thought this dream of hers a “vanity” too. Very lightly did culture weigh in his mind. This was a new thought; she was called to another kind of self-denial than that of food and clothing. Might not the culture of the mind be dearly bought at the expense of another’s life? Myra Bateson’s life, too, involved the happiness of the little ones gathered about her knees. The problem grew complex; contrasted with the well-being of this family group Miss Colbourne felt the insignificance of her own needs. “I don’t want to believe it,” she said at last, with a half-smile, “but after all the Mother is more important than the Teacher.”