Thus all powers of earth and heaven had combined to make Clarke the ruler of Viola Lambert's little world. He stood between her and young Clinton Ward and all other suitors--he absorbed her thought. She admired his gifts, and trembled beneath the power of his dark eyes, his magnetic hands, and especially responded to the music of his deep voice, which was very enthralling when it took on the pleading melody of the lover. At times he filled her with such passion of vague unrest that life became a torment, for she was of the age when the world is for the lover's conquest, and the cadence of love's song means most and is least understood; and yet at times she felt a fear of him which chilled her. She was struggling, too, with growing ambitions, and with an expanding knowledge of the world which was beginning to make her critical--the wonder of the child was giving place to the insight of the woman. The wish to shake off her invisible tormentors and be like other girls was in reality a demand for the right to be loved and valued for her own natural self, entirely free from the touch of spectral hands. She was disappointed that Clarke did not understand and sympathize with this wish, but that he desired her in marriage had never once entered her mind. He was a minister, and she reverenced his office, and, besides, she considered herself but a girl, too ignorant and too trivial to be the wife of one so high in holy service. With the coming of the young professor a new force seemed entered upon the saner side of her life. She recognized in him a master of the great outer world--the Eastern world, the world of the unafraid--and her determination to at least subordinate her "controls" had expanded swiftly to a most dangerous height during the few hours of her companionship with him. She felt that he would sympathize with her--that he would help her. The clear positiveness of his speech, his health, his humor, grew upon her each moment, and she resolved to confide in him when next they met.