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 was necessary to set a course. And they might be considered fortunate in having a fair-minded third person at hand to see them safely beyond the first reefs. It hadn't occurred to Miriam that she might be a reef.

With Louise nothing remained on the surface; the massage that polished her manners polished her thoughts, and with increasing facility in the technique of carrying herself came an increasing desire to carry herself somewhere. As a girl she had too easily outdistanced her companions. Until Miriam Cread's advent there had been no woman with whom to compete, and her intelligence had in consequence slumbered. Keble had transformed her from a girl into a woman; but Miriam made her realize the wide range of possibilities comprised under Womanhood, and had put her on her mettle to define her own particular character as a woman. Now her personality was fully awake, and her daily routine was characterized by an insatiable mental activity, during which she proceeded to a footing on many subjects about which she had never given herself the trouble to think. She had read more books than most girls, and had dined on weighty volumes in her father's library for the sake of their sweets; but under the pressure of her new intellectual intensity she found that, without knowing it, she had been nourished on their soups and roasts. The unrelated impressions that she had long been capturing from books and thrusting carelessly upon mental shelves now formed