It was enough for them that she was to be a visitor, and would thus destroy the great circle they had projected.

To accept her in the circle, they felt, was out of the question.

Wilfrid's plain-speaking broke up the air-bubble, which they had so carefully blown, and in which they had embarked all their young hopes.

They had as much as given one another a pledge that their home likewise should be broken up.
"Are you not almost too severe a student ?" Mr.Barrett happened to say to Cornelia, the day after Wilfrid had worried her.
"Do I show the signs ?" she replied.
"By no means.

But last night, was it not your light that was not extinguished till morning ?" "We soon have morning now," said Cornelia; and her face was pale as the first hour of the dawn.