ground, but she had invariably escaped her destination. Through long years of perpetual indecision she had nearly succeeded in outwitting time and space.

Nobody minded this attitude except Cicely. She fought against chaos from her youth up. They all dreaded her tongue and clung persistently to their habits. The professor fled earlier to the museum, sometimes in carpet slippers. Immediately after breakfast Mrs. Waring retired with a little book to an untidied bedroom.

Eurydice, dropping manuscripts, hair-ribbons, and defiance, escaped to a locked attic; and Stella remained as a gentle adjutant to her severer sister. Cicely did get a few things done. She saw that meals were cooked, windows opened, beds made, and clocks wound; but nothing continuous rewarded her efforts. The power of the human will is a small weapon against consolidated inertia.

For five years Cicely played upon No. 9 Redcliffe Square like an intermittent searchlight; then she gave it up, and became a student in a women's hospital. The household breathed a sigh of intense relief at her departure, and collapsed benevolently into chaos.

Nobody except Stella regretted it. The professor was openly thankful.

"She may become a student," he observed coldly when it was explained to him where Cicely had gone, "but she will never become a scholar. She has a superficial hunger for the definite.

"I really do not think it will be necessary for me to take my supper at a given hour. Stella will know that, whenever I ring my bell, I mean cocoa."

"Dear Cicely is a pioneer," murmured Mrs. Waring, with a gentle sigh. "I can always imagine her doing wonderful things in a desert with a buffalo."

"Now I shall be able to have my friends at the house without their being insulted," cried Eurydice, triumphantly. "Last time when Mr. Bolt was in the middle of reading his new poem, 'The Whirl,' a most delicate and difficult poem set to a secret rhythm, Cicely burst in and asked for the slop-pail. It looked so lovely! I had covered it with autumn leaves and placed it half-way up the chimney. It might have been a Grecian urn, but of course she dragged it out. She drags out everything."

Eurydice had a profession, too. She was a suppressed artist. She felt that she could have painted like Van Gogh, only perfectly individually. She saw everything in terms of color and in the shape of cubes. Railway lines reminded her of 

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