Herminia, however, could dispense with all that show. She had a
little cottage of her own, she told Alan,--a tiny little cottage,
in a street near her school-work; she rented it for a small sum,
in quite a poor quarter, all inhabited by work-people. There she
lived by herself; for she kept no servants. There she should
continue to live; why need this purely personal compact between
them two make any difference in her daily habits? She would go
on with her school-work for the present, as usual. Oh, no, she
certainly didn't intend to notify the head-mistress of the school
or any one else, of her altered position. It was no alteration of
position at all, so far as she was concerned; merely the addition
to life of a new and very dear and natural friendship. Herminia
took her own point of view so instinctively indeed,--lived so
wrapped in an ideal world of her own and the future's,--that Alan
was often quite alarmed in his soul when he thought of the rude
awakening that no doubt awaited her. Yet whenever he hinted it to
her with all possible delicacy, she seemed so perfectly prepared
for the worst the world could do, so fixed and resolved in her
intention of martyrdom, that he had no argument left, and could
only sigh over her.
It was not, she explained to him further, that she wished to
conceal anything. The least tinge of concealment was wholly alien
to that frank fresh nature. If her head-mistress asked her a
point-blank question, she would not attempt to parry it, but would
reply at once with a point blank answer. Still, her very views on
the subject made it impossible for her to volunteer information
unasked to any one. Here was a personal matter of the utmost
privacy; a matter which concerned nobody on earth, save herself and
Alan; a matter on which it was the grossest impertinence for any
one else to make any inquiry or hold any opinion. They two chose
to be friends; and there, so far as the rest of the world was
concerned, the whole thing ended. What else took place between
them was wholly a subject for their own consideration. But if ever
circumstances should arise which made it necessary for her to avow
to the world that she must soon be a mother, then it was for the
world to take the first step, if it would act upon its own hateful
and cruel initiative. She would never deny, but she would never go
out of her way to confess. She stood upon her individuality as a
human being.