Chapter 7 - Page 2

great a fool as girls of my age usually are. If I am in love,
I have sense enough not to let my love blind my judgment."

She did not tell anyone of her new interest in life. Strongest in
that student community, she had used her power with good-nature
enough to win the popularity of a school leader, and occasionally
with unscrupulousness enough to secure the privileges of a school
bully. Popularity and privilege, however, only satisfied her when
she was in the mood for them. Girls, like men, want to be petted,
pitied, and made much of, when they are diffident, in low
spirits, or in unrequited love. These are services which the weak
cannot render to the strong and which the strong will not render
to the weak, except when there is also a difference of sex.
Agatha knew by experience that though a weak woman cannot
understand why her stronger sister should wish to lean upon her,
she may triumph in the fact without understanding it, and give
chaff instead of consolation. Agatha wanted to be understood and
not to be chaffed. Finding herself unable to satisfy both these
conditions, she resolved to do without sympathy and to hold her
tongue. She had often had to do so before, and she was helped on
this occasion by a sense of the ridiculous appearance her passion
might wear in the vulgar eye. Her secret kept itself, as she was
supposed in the college to be insensible to the softer emotions.
Love wrought no external change upon her. It made her believe
that she had left her girlhood behind her and was now a woman
with a newly-developed heart capacity at which she would
childishly have scoffed a little while before. She felt ashamed
of the bee on the window pane, although it somehow buzzed as
frequently as before in spite of her. Her calendar, formerly a
monotonous cycle of class times, meal times, play times, and bed
time, was now irregularly divided by walks past the chalet and
accidental glimpses of its tenant.

Early in December came a black frost, and navigation on the canal
was suspended. Wickens's boy was sent to the college with news
that Wickens's pond would bear, and that the young ladies should
be welcome at any time. The pond was only four feet deep, and as
Miss Wilson set much store by the physical education of her
pupils, leave was given for skating. Agatha, who was expert on
the ice, immediately proposed that a select party should go out
before breakfast next morning. Actions not in themselves virtuous
often appear so when performed at hours that compel early rising,
and some of the candidates for the Cambridge Local, who would not
have sacrificed the afternoon to amusement, at once fell in with
her suggestion. But for them it might never have been carried
out; for when they