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herself. She had a theory that it was only under this provi-
sion life was worth living; that one should be one of the best,
should be conscious of a fine organization (she couldn’t help
knowing her organization was fine), should move in a realm
of light, of natural wisdom, of happy impulse, of inspiration
gracefully chronic. It was almost as unnecessary to culti-
vate doubt of one’s self as to cultivate doubt of one’s best
friend: one should try to be one’s own best friend and to give
one’s self, in this manner, distinguished company. The girl
had a certain nobleness of imagination which rendered her
a good many services and played her a great many tricks.
She spent half her time in thinking of beauty and bravery
and magnanimity; she had a fixed determination to regard
the world as a place of brightness, of free expansion, of irre-
sistible action: she held it must be detestable to be afraid or
ashamed. She had an infinite hope that she should never do
anything wrong. She had resented so strongly, after discov-
ering them, her mere errors of feeling (the discovery always
made her tremble as if she had escaped from a trap which
might have caught her and smothered her) that the chance
of inflicting a sensible injury upon another person, present-
ed only as a contingency, caused her at moments to hold her
breath. That always struck her as the worst thing that could
happen to her. On the whole, reflectively, she was in no un-
certainty about the things that were wrong. She had no love
of their look, but when she fixed them hard she recognized
them. It was wrong to be mean, to be jealous, to be false, to
be cruel; she had seen very little of the evil of the world, but
she had seen women who lied and who tried to hurt each

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