But she sometimes wondered whether the beckoning light was not austere and cold.
She glanced at her dress.

It was a neutral color and like a uniform.
After all, she had physical charm and it was sometimes irksome to wear unbecoming clothes.

Then the lofty room, with its varnished desks and benches, looked bleak; her life was passed in bare class-rooms and echoing stone corridors.

This would not have mattered had she been able to follow her bent and take the line she had once marked out; but she could not.

She must give up the thought of independent research and teach for a living, cramping her talents to meet her pupils' intelligence, until, in time, she sank to their level.
She roused herself with an effort and mechanically resumed her lecture, for her wandering thoughts now dwelt upon the foaming rivers and cool forests of the North.