additions had been made since her grandfather's death. All books were
therefore a generation too old, and Helena found antiquated ideals.
The first book which fell into her hands was Madame de Stael's _Corinna_
The way in which the volume lay on the shelf indicated that it had
served a special purpose. Bound in green and gold, a little shabby at
the edges, full of marginal notes and underlined passages, the work of
her late mother, it became a bridge, as it were, between mother and
daughter, which enabled the now grown-up daughter to make the
acquaintance of the dead mother. These pencil notes were the story
of a soul. Displeasure with the prose of life and the brutality of
nature, had inflamed the writer's imagination and inspired it to
construct a dreamworld in which the souls dwelled, disincarnate. It
was essentially an aristocratic world, this dreamworld, for it
required financial independence from its denizens, so that the soul
might be fed with thoughts. This brain-fever, called romance, was
therefore the gospel of the wealthy, and became absurd and pitiful as
soon as it penetrated to the lower classes.

Corinna became Helena's ideal: the divinely inspired poetess who like
the nun of the middle-ages, had vowed a vow of chastity, so that she
might lead a life of purity, who was, of course, admired by a brilliant
throng, rose to immeasurable heights above the heads of the petty
every-day mortals. It was the old ideal all over again, transposed:
salutes, standing at attention, rolling of drums, the first place
everywhere. Helena was quite ignorant of the fact that Madame de Stael
outlived the Corinna ideal, and did not become a real influence until
she came out of her dreamworld into the world of facts.

She ceased to take an interest in everyday affairs, she communed with
herself and brooded over her ego. The inheritance which her mother had