being her natural state, she welcomed it heartily at first, and was very thankful to be at home.  It did not take long to discover that she had no longer the same desire for her childish occupations and amusements; they were only incidental now and pertained to certain moods, and could not again be made the chief purposes of her life.  She hardly knew what to do with herself, and sometimes wondered what would become of her, and why she was alive at all, as she longed for some sufficient motive of existence to catch her up into its whirlwind.  She was filled with energy and a great desire for usefulness, but it was not with her, as with many of her friends, that the natural instinct toward marriage, and the building and keeping of a sweet home-life, ruled all other plans and possibilities.  Her best wishes and hopes led her away from all this, and however tenderly she sympathized in other people’s happiness, and recognized its inevitableness, for herself she avoided unconsciously all approach or danger of it.  She was trying to climb by the help of some other train of experiences to whatever satisfaction and success were possible for her in this world.  If she had been older and of a different nature, she might have been told that to climb up any other way toward a shelter from the fear of worthlessness, and mistake, and reproach, would be to prove herself in most people’s eyes a thief and a robber.  But in these days she was not fit to reason much about her fate; she could only wait for the problems to make themselves understood, and for the whole influence of her character and of the preparatory years to shape and signify themselves into a simple chart and unmistakable command.  And until the power was given to “see life steadily and see it whole,” she busied herself aimlessly with such details as were evidently her duty, and sometimes following the right road and often wandering from it in willful impatience, she stumbled along more or less unhappily.  It seemed as if everybody had forgotten Nan’s gift and love for the great profession which was her childish delight and ambition.  To be sure she had studied anatomy and physiology with eager devotion in the meagre text-books at school, though the other girls had grumbled angrily at the task.  Long ago, when Nan had confided to her dearest cronies that she meant to be a doctor, they were hardly surprised that she should determine upon a career which they would have rejected for themselves.  She was not of their mind, and they believed her capable of doing anything she undertook.  Yet to most of them the possible and even probable marriage which was waiting somewhere in the future seemed to hover like a cloudy barrier over the realization of any such unnatural plans.