It was during these reveries that the picture subject she craved commenced to haunt her as it gradually shaped itself into definiteness. Since her singular interview with the French girl at Dinan a lurid gleam streamed from the gates ajar of mysteries that had baffled her. She had read widely and deeply; but books are only the gloss of life, they are not the text. Its secrets must be read in the living world, with much pain and sleeplessness and wearied eyes. The throbbing page had been presented to Clytie for one sharp moment, blazing, the while, in letters of flame. Such knowledge changes lingering girlhood into womanhood without the aid of passion. It changes sex-pride into sex-sorrow--in higher natures, be it understood. And this sex-sorrow runs in channels hollowed out by ever-varying circumstance and temperament. It flows in the patient, all-enduring devotion of the sister labouring among outcasts, in the militant enthusiasm of the social reformer. It quivers in the hearts of teachers like George Eliot and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It lives in the souls of some mothers who tremulously watch the shaping of their daughter's destiny. With Clytie it ran confluent with her artistic impulses. It had influenced them vaguely, dimly, hauntingly for months, but now, at last, stirringly, proclaiming itself, insistently demanding expression. The subject was found: Faustina in her innocent maidenhood. The problem: how to manifest the foreshadowings of passion on the young, clear face? Clytie spent hours in her attic trying to fix the summer lightnings of features that flashed elusively before her mind. She wished she were in London, to go abroad in the highways seeking after a face. It seemed to her that in the great city she would find the one she wanted, in the park, at the theatre, perhaps among the subdued black rows of women--lines of suppressed volcanic workings--in some great shop. But in Durdleham volcanoes were extinct or regulated by formula to erupt with mild propriety. She began to feel the frenzied weariness of helplessness. If only she could talk to someone--to Kent. One day Mrs. Blather came into the attic. Clytie was dreaming before incoherent charcoal streaks. The fire had burned low and the draught of the opening door made her shiver. “Why, Clytie, child, you are blue with cold,” said her sister, wrapping her gray woollen shawl more tightly round her thin shoulders. “Why do you mope up here?” “I am not moping, Gracie,” replied Clytie; “I am only working--conceiving a picture, that's all.” “Oh, but you oughtn't to do any work. Have you not come down for a holiday? What's the good of burning the candle at both ends? Come down to the drawing-room and talk to the Howatsons; they are inquiring after you.” “But I am in such a mess!” laughed Clytie, showing her blackened finger tips.