Now for the next few years of Isobel's life there is little to be told.Mr. Knight was an able man and a good teacher, and being a clever girlshe learned a great deal from him, especially in the way ofmathematics, for which, as has been said, she had a natural leaning.
Indeed very soon she outstripped Godfrey and the other lads in this andsundry other branches of study, sitting at a table by herself on whatonce had been the dais of the old hall. In the intervals of lessons,however, it was their custom to take walks together and then it wasthat she always found herself at the side of Godfrey. Indeed theybecame inseparable, at any rate in mind. A strange and most uncommonintimacy existed between these young creatures, almost might it havebeen called a friendship of the spirit. Yet, and this was the curiouspart of it, they were dissimilar in almost everything that goes to makeup a human being. Even in childhood there was scarcely a subject onwhich they thought alike, scarcely a point upon which they would notargue.
Godfrey was fond of poetry; it bored Isobel. His tendencies weretowards religion though of a very different type from that preached andpractised by his father; hers were anti-religious. In fact she wouldhave been inclined to endorse the saying of that other schoolgirl whodefined faith as "the art of believing those things which we know to beuntrue," while to him on the other hand they were profoundly true,though often enough not in the way that they are generally accepted.Had he possessed any powers of definition at that age, probably hewould have described our accepted beliefs as shadows of the Truth,distorted and fantastically shaped, like those thrown by changeful,ragged clouds behind which the eternal sun is shining, shadows thatvary in length and character according to the hour and weather of themortal day.
Isobel for her part took little heed of shadows. Her clear, scientificstamp of mind searched for ascertainable facts, and on these she builtup her philosophy of life and of the death that ends it. Of course allsuch contradictions may often be found in a single mind which believesat one time and rejects at another and sees two, or twenty sides ofeverything with a painful and bewildering clearness.
Such a character is apt to end in profound dissatisfaction with theself from which it cannot be free. Much more then would one haveimagined that these two must have been dissatisfied with each other andsought the opportunities of escape which were open to them. But it wasnot so in the least. They argued and contradicted until they hadnothing more to say, and then lapsed into long periods of weary butgood-natured silence. In a sense each completed each by the addition ofits opposite, as the darkness completes the light, thus making theround of the perfect day.
As yet this deep affection and remarkable oneness showed no signs ofthe end to which obviously it was drifting. That kiss which the girlhad given to the boy was pure sisterly, or one might almost say,motherly, and indeed this quality inspired their relationship for muchlonger than might have been expected. So much was this so that no oneconnected with them on either side ever had the slightest suspicionthat they cared for each other in any way except as friends and fellowpupils.