Page:Margaret Sherwood--A Puritan in Bohemia.djvu/62

54 Helen slipped away. The conversation was not to her mind.

Mrs. Kent looked troubled. "There is something morbid in that girl's intensity," she said. "She is under strong emotional tension all the time."

"Isn't there a little dash of longing for excitement in Helen's yearning to do good?" asked Anne. "The Lord made her for great crises, but unkindly forgot to make any crises for her."

"You are all like that," answered Mrs. Kent demurely. "I don't understand the mental and moral and spiritual restlessness of the young of to-day. Perhaps it is only the uneasiness of those who have not yet found their places in the ranks. You go about with an expectant air, as if imagining that some ineffable thought or experience will tell you the next minute all there is to know."

Anne laughed.

"We aren't all quite so much at sea as Helen is. She has been developed a little on too many sides. Did the woman's