"I see," he went on this evening, warming to the work, "I see the opening day, long announced, of the palace. The halls are furnished and lit up; the dancing-room is ready; the theatre is completed, and the electric lights are lit; the concert-rooms are ready with their music-stands and their seats. The doors are open. Then a wonderful thing happens."
"The vast chambers echo with the footsteps of yourself, Miss Kennedy, and of Nelly, who makes no more noise than a demure kitten. Captain Sorensen and I make as much trampling as we can, to produce the effect of a crowd. But it hardly seems to succeed. Then come the girls, and we try to get up a dance; but, as Nelly says, it is not quite the same as your drawing-room. Presently two men, with pipes in their mouths, come in and look about them. I explain that the stage is ready for them, if they like to act; or the concert-room, if they will sing; or the dancing-room, should they wish to shake a leg. They stare and they go away. Then we shut up the doors and go away and cry."
"O Mr. Goslett, have you no other comfort for me?"
"Plenty of comfort. While we are all crying, somebody has a happy thought. I think it is Nelly."
She blushed a pretty rosy red. "I am sure I could never suggest anything."
"Nelly suggests that we shall offer prizes, a quantity of prizes, for competition in everything, the audience or the spectators to be judges; and then the palace will be filled and the universal reign of joy will begin."
"Can we afford prizes?" asked Angela the practical.
"Miss Kennedy," said Harry severely, "permit me to remind you that, in carrying out this project, money, for the first time in the world's history, is to be of no value."
If Newnham does not teach women to originate--which a thousand Newnhams will never do--it teaches them to catch at an idea and develop it. The young workman suggested her palace; but his first rough idea was a poor thing compared with Angela's finished structure--a wigwam beside a castle, a tabernacle beside a cathedral. Angela was devising an experiment, the like of which has never yet been tried upon restless and dissatisfied mankind. She was going, in short, to say to them: "Life is full, crammed full, overflowing with all kinds of delights. It is a mistake to suppose that only rich people can enjoy these things. They may buy them, but everybody may create them; they cost nothing. You shall learn music, and forthwith all the world will be transformed for you; you shall learn to paint, to carve, to model, to design, and the day shall be too short to contain the happiness you will get out of it. You shall learn to dance, and know the rapture of the waltz. You shall learn the great art of acting, and give each other the pleasure which rich men buy. You shall even learn the great art of writing, and learn the magic of a charmed phrase. All these things which make the life of rich people happy shall be yours; and they _shall cost you nothing_. What the heart of man can desire shall be yours, _and for nothing_. I will give you a house to shelter you, and rooms in which to play; you have only to find the rest. Enter in, my friends; forget the squalid past; here are great halls and lovely corridors--they are yours. Fill them with sweet echoes of dropping music; let the walls be covered with your works of art; let the girls laugh and the boys be happy within these walls. I give you the shell, the empty carcass; fill it with the spirit of content and happiness."