One of Alwynne's duties was the conduct of a small "extra" class, consisting of girls, who, for reasons of stupidity, ill-health or defective grounding, fell too far below the average of knowledge in their respective classes. She devoted certain afternoons in the week to coaching them, and was considered to be unusually successful in her methods. She could be extremely patient, and had quaint and unorthodox ways of insinuating facts into her pupils' minds. As she told Elsbeth, she invented their memories for them. She was sufficiently imaginative to realise their difficulties, yet sufficiently young to dream of developing, in due course, all her lame ducks into swans. She was intensely interested in hearing how her coaching had succeeded; her pleasure at an amended place in class was so genuine, her disappointment at a collapse so comically real, yet so devoid of contempt, so tinged with conviction that it was anybody's fault but the culprit's, that either attitude was an incentive to real effort. Like Clare, she did not suffer fools gladly, but unlike Clare, she had not the moral courage to be ruthless. Stupidity seemed as terrible to her as physical deformity; she treated it with the same touch of motherliness, the same instinctive desire to spare it realisation of its own unsightliness.

Her rather lovable cowardice brought a mixed reward; she stifled in sick-rooms, yet invalids liked her well; she was frankly envious of Clare's circle of brilliant girls and as inevitably surrounded by inarticulate adorers, who bored her mightily, but whose clumsy affection she was too kindhearted to suppress.

It had been well for Alwynne, however, that her following was of the duller portion of the school. This Clare could endure, could countenance; such boy-bishopry could not affect her own sovereignty, and her subject's consequence increased her own. But to see Alwynne swaying, however unconsciously, minds of a finer type, would not have been easy for Clare. She had grown very fond of Alwynne; but the sentiment was proprietary; she could derive no pleasure from her that was not personal, and, in its most literal sense, selfish. She was unmaternal to the core. She could not see human property admired by others with any sensation but that of a double jealousy; she was subtly angered that Alwynne could attract, yet was caught herself in the net of those attractions, and unable to endure to watch them spread for any but herself.

Alwynne, quite unconscious of the trait, had at first done herself harm by her unfeigned interest in Clare's circle. It took the elder woman some suspicious weeks to realise that Alwynne lacked completely her own dompteuse instinct, her craving for power; that she was as innocent of knowledge of her own charm as unwedded Eve; that her impulse to Clare was an impulse of the freshest, sweetest hero-worship; but the realisation came at last, and Clare opened her hungry heart to her, and, warmed by Alwynne's affection, wondered that she had hesitated so long.

Alwynne never guessed that she had been doubted. Clare was proud of her genuine skill as a character reader—had been a little pleased to give Alwynne proof of her penetration when occasion arose; and Alwynne, less trained, less critical, thought her omniscient, and never dreamed that the motives of her obscurest actions, the sources of her most veiled references were not plain to Clare. Secure of comprehension, she went her way: any one in whom Clare was interested must needs attract her: so she took pains to become intimate with Clare's adorers, from a very real sympathy with their appreciation of Clare, whom she no more grudged to them than a priestess would grudge the unveiling of her goddess to the initiate. She received their confidences, learned their secrets, fanned the flame of their enthusiasms. Too lately a schoolgirl herself, too innocent and ignorant to dream of danger, she did her loyal utmost in furtherance of the cult, measuring the artificial and unbalanced emotions she encountered by the rule of her own saner affection, and, in her desire to see her friend appreciated, in all good faith utilised her degree of authority to encourage what an older woman would have recognised and combated as incipient hysteria.

Gradually she became, through her frank sympathy, combined with her slightly indeterminate official position, the intermediary, the interpreter of Clare to the feverish school. Clare herself, her initial distrust over, found this useful. She could afford to be moody, erratic, whimsical; to be extravagant in her praises and reproofs; to deteriorate, at times, into a caricature of her own bizarre personality, with the comfortable assurance that there was ever a magician in her wake to steady her tottering shrines, mix oil with her vitriol, and prove her pinchbeck gold.

Fatal, this relaxation of effort, to a woman of Clare's type. Love of some sort was vital to her. Of this her surface personality was dimly, ashamedly aware, and would, if challenged, have frigidly denied; but the whole of her larger self knew its need, and saw to it that that need was satisfied. Clare, unconscious, had taught Clare, conscious, that there must be effort—constant, straining effort at cultivation of all her alluring qualities, at concealment of all in her that could repulse—effort that all appearances of complete success must never allow her to relax. She knew well the evanescent character of a schoolgirl's affection; so well that when her pupils left the school she seldom tried to retain her hold upon them. Their letters would come thick as autumn leaves at first; she rarely answered, or after long intervals; and the letters dwindled and ceased. She knew that, in the nature of things, it must be so, and had no wish to prolong the farewells.

Also, her interest in her correspondents usually died first; to sustain it required their physical nearness. But every new year filled the gaps left by the old, stimulated Clare to fresh exertion.

So the lean years went by. Then came vehement Alwynne—no schoolgirl—yet more youthful and ingenuous than any mistress had right to be, loving with all the discrimination of a fine mind, and all the ardour of an affectionate child. Here was no question of a fleeting devotion that must end as the schooldays ended. Here was love for Clare at last, a widow's cruse to last her for all time. Clare thanked the gods of her unbelief, and, relaxing all effort, settled herself to enjoy to the full the cushioning sense of security; the mock despot of their pleasant, earlier intercourse becoming, as she bound Alwynne ever more closely to her, albeit unconsciously, a very real tyrant indeed.

Yet she had no intention of weakening her hold on any lesser member of her chosen coterie. Alwynne was too ingenuous, too obviously subject through her own free impulse, to entirely satisfy: Clare's love of power had its morbid moments, when a struggling victim, head averted, pleased her. There was never, among the new-comers, a child, self-absorbed, nonchalant or rebellious, who passed a term unmolested by Miss Hartill. Egoism aroused her curiosity, her suspicion of hidden lands, virgin, ripe for exploration; indifference piqued her; a flung gauntlet she welcomed with frank amusement. She had been a rebel in her own time, and had ever a thrill of sympathy for the mutinies she relentlessly crushed. War, personal war, delighted her; she was a mistress of tactics, and the certainty of eventual victory gave zest to her campaigns. She did not realise that the strain upon her childish opponents was very great. The finer, the more sensitive the character, the more complete the eventual defeat, the more permanent its effects. Clare was pitiless after victory: not till then did she examine into the nature thus enslaved, seldom did she find it worth the trouble of the skirmish. In most cases she gave semi-liberty; enough of smiles to keep the children feverishly at work to please her (the average of achievement in her classes was astounding), and enough of indifference to prevent them from becoming a nuisance. To the few that pleased her fastidious taste, she gave of her best, lavishly, as she had given to Alwynne. There are women to-day, old girls of the school, who owe Clare Hartill the best things of their lives, their wide knowledge, their original ideas, their hopeful futures and happy memories: to whom she was an inspiration incarnate. The Clare they remember is not the Clare that Elsbeth knew, that Alwynne learned to know, that Clare herself, one bitter night, faced and blanched at. But which of them had knowledge of the true Clare, who shall say?

In Clare's favourite class was a certain Louise Denny. She was thirteen—nearly three years below the average of the class in age. How far beyond it in all else, not even Clare realised.

Clare had discovered her, as she phrased it, in the limbo of the Lower Third. She had been paying one of her surprise visits to the afternoon extra needlework classes—(the possibility of her occasional appearance, book in hand, was responsible for the school's un-English proficiency in hemming, darning and kindred mysteries), to read aloud to the children carefully edited excerpts from Poe's Tales, had forgotten her copy and had been shyly offered another, private property from Louise Denny's desk. Thereon must Alwynne, for a week or two, resign perforce her Lower Third literature classes to Clare, intent on her blue rose. Louise's compositions had been read—Clare and Alwynne spent a long evening over them, weighing, comparing, discussing. Clare could be exquisitely tender, could keep all-patient vigil over an unfolding mind, provided that the calyx concealed a rare enough blossom. Louise was encouraged, her shyness swept aside, her ideas developed, her knowledge tested; she was fed, too, cautiously, on richer and richer food—stray evening lectures, picture galleries with Alwynne, headiest of cicerones; the freedom of the library and long talks with Clare. Finally Clare, bearing down all opposition, transplanted her to the Lower Fifth, containing at that time some brilliantly clever girls. Louise justified her by speedily capturing, and doggedly retaining, the highest place in the class.

Clare was delighted. Her critics—there were some mistresses who vaguely disapproved of the experiment—were refuted, and the class, already needing no spur, outdoing itself in its efforts to compete with the intruder, swept the board at an important public examination.

On the morning of the announcement of results, Clare entered her form-room radiant. It was a low, many-windowed room, with desks ranged single-file along the walls. The class being a small one, the girls were accustomed to sit for their lessons at a large oval table at the upper end of the room. Beside the passage doorway, there was a smaller one, that led into the studio, and was never used by the children. Clare, however, would sometimes enter by it, but so seldom that they invariably forgot to keep watch. Clare enjoyed the occasional view she thus obtained of her unconscious and relaxed subjects, and the piquancy of their uncensored conversation; she enjoyed still more the sudden hush, the crisp thrill, that ran through their groups, when they became aware of her, observant in the doorway.

On the morning in question she had watched them for some little while. Before each girl lay her open exercise-book and school edition of Browning. They were deep in discussion of their work, very eager upon some question. By the empty chair at the head of the table sat Marion Hughes, blonde and placid, a rounded elbow on her neatly written theme, that her neighbour was trying to pull away, to compare with her own well-inked manuscript. This neighbour, one Agatha Middleton, was dark, gaunt, with restless eyes and restless tongue. She was old for her fifteen years, and had been original until she discovered that her originality appealed to Miss Hartill. Since then she had imitated her own mannerisms, and was rapidly degenerating into an eccentric. The law of opposites had decreed that the sedate Marion should be her bosom friend. They went up the school together, an incongruous, yet well-suited pair, for they were so unlike that there could be no rivalry. Marion was alternately amused and dazzled by the pyrotechnic Agatha. Agatha's respect for Marion's common sense was pleasantly tempered by a conviction of superior mental agility. Finally, they were united by their common devotion to their form-mistress. Whether it would have occurred to Marion, unprompted, to admire Miss Hartill, is uncertain. Her affections were domestic and calm. But adoration was in the air, and she had not sufficient originality to be unfashionable. She was caught, too, in Agatha's whirlwind emotions, and ended by worshipping Clare conscientiously and sincerely. Clare, on her side, respected her, as she told Alwynne, for her "painstaking and intelligent stupidity," and, recognising a nature too worthy for neglect, yet too lymphatic to be suitable for experiments, was uniformly kind to her. Agatha, she had revelled in for six weeks, and had since more or less ignored as a bore. Below the pair sat a spectacled student, predestined to scholarships and a junior mistress-ship; opposite, between giggling twins, a vivid little Jewess, whose showy work was due to the same vanity that tied her curls with giant bows, and over-corsetted her matured figure. At the foot of the oval, directly opposite Clare's vacant chair, stood Louise, flushed and excited, chanting low-voicedly a snatch of verse.

During a lull in the hubbub Marion called to her down the table—

"How many pages?"

Louise flushed. She was still a little in awe of these elders whom she had outstripped. She rapidly counted the leaves of her essay, and held up both hands, smiling shyly.

Marion exclaimed.

"Ten? You marvel! I only got to seven. I simply didn't understand it. Whatever did you find to say?"

Agatha fell upon the query.

"That's nothing! I've done twenty-two!" she cried triumphantly, and turned to face the shower of comments.

"Miss Hartill will bless you. She said last time that you thought ink and ideas were synonyms."

"Agatha only writes three words to a line anyway."

They liked her, but she was of the type whose imperiousness provokes snubs.

"Well, I thought I shouldn't get it done under forty—an essay on The Dark Tower. It's the beastliest yet. The Ancient Mariner was nothing to it. I've made an awful hash—didn't you?"

"I understood all right when she read it, and explained. It's so absurd not to let one take notes. I've been years at it. Fortunately she said we needn't learn it—Louise and I—with all our extra work." An unimaginative hockey captain fluttered her pages distractedly.

"Oh, but I have!" Louise looked up quickly.

"Why?" The hockey captain opened her eyes and mouth.

"Oh, I rather wanted to."

The little Jewess giggled.

"'DÉjÀ?'" she murmured. She did not love Clare.

Marion returned to the subject with her usual perseverance.

"Did you understand it, kid?"

Louise stammered a little.

"When she reads it, and when I say it aloud, I think I do. It was impossible to write it down."

"Let's see what you have put." Agatha, by a quick movement, possessed herself of Louise's exercise-book. Louise, shy and desperate, strove silently with her neighbours, who, curious, held her back, while Agatha, holding the book at arm's length, recited from it in a high mocking voice.

"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came. Description! Description! Description! for three—five—seven pages! You've let yourself go, Louise! Ah, here we are—The meaning of the poem. Now we're getting to it. Shakespeare and Browning may have known all the real history of Childe Roland; the reason of his quest, the secret of the horror of the Tower; but we are left in ignorance. That does not matter, for, as we read, the inner meaning of the terrible poem kills all curiosity. Shuddering we close the book, and pray to God that Childe Roland's journey may never be ours; that for our adventurous souls, knight-erranting through this queer life, there may never come a choice of ways, a turning from the pleasant high-road, to go upon a hideous journey; till, crossing the Plains of Loneliness, Fear and Sorrow, we face the Hills of Madness, and enter the Dark Tower of that Despair which is our soul's death. With capital letters galore! What a sentence! Here, shut up, you spit-fire!" Louise had wrenched herself free and flung herself upon Agatha, in a white heat of anger.

"Give it me! You've no right! You've no right!" she gasped. Her shyness had gone, she was blazing with indignation.

Agatha, the book held teasingly out of reach, affected to search for her place. Louise raised her clenched fist desperately.

A cool hand caught her wrist in a firm yet kindly grip. A hush fell on the voluble group and Agatha collapsed into an apologetic nonentity.

Clare, who had entered in her usual noiseless fashion, stood a moment between the combatants, watching the effect of her appearance. Her hand shifted to Louise's bony little shoulder; through the thin blouse she could feel the driven blood pulsing. She did not move till she felt the child regaining comparative calm, when, giving her a gentle push towards her place, she walked slowly to the head of the table and seated herself. The class watched her furtively. It was quite aware that all rules of decorum had been transgressed—that pains and penalties would be in order with any other mistress. But with Miss Hartill there was always glorious uncertainty—and Miss Hartill did not look annoyed. Little gestures began to break the tension and Agatha, relieved, smiled a shade too broadly. Instantly Clare closed with her.

She began blandly—

"Agatha, I thought you could read aloud better than that. You are not doing your work justice. Pass me your essay."

"It's Louise's," said Agatha helplessly.

"Ah, I see. And you kindly read it to us for her? It's a pity you didn't understand what you read—but an excuse, of course. Louise must not expect too much."

Agatha flung up her head angrily.

"Oh, I understood it all right. I thought it was silly."

"You did? Read me your own."

"Now?"

"Certainly."

Now Clare, as she corrected and commented upon the weekly essays, did occasionally, if the mood took her, read extracts, humorous chiefly, therefrom; but it had never been customary for a pupil to read her own work aloud. Agatha had the pioneer spirit—but she was no fool. She comprehended that, with Clare inimical, she could climb no higher than the pillory. She fell back upon the tradition of the school.

"Oh, Miss Hartill—I can't!"

"Why not?"

"No one ever does——"

Clare waited.

Agatha protested redly, her fear of ridicule outweighing her fear of Clare.

"Miss Hartill, I simply couldn't. Before everybody—all this tosh—I mean all this stuff I wrote. It's a written essay. I couldn't make it sound right aloud."

Clare waited.

"It's not good enough, Miss Hartill. Honestly! And we never have. You've never made us. I couldn't."

Clare waited.

Agatha twisted her hands uneasily. The schoolgirl shyness that is physical misery was upon her.

"I—don't want to, Miss Hartill. I can't. It's not fair to have one's stuff—to be laughed at—to be——" she subsided just in time.

The class sat, breathless, all eyes on Clare.

And Clare waited; waited till defiance faded to unease—unease to helplessness, till the girl, overborne by the utter silence, gave way, and dropping her eyes to her exercise, fluttering its pages in angry embarrassment, finally, with a giggle of pure nervousness, embarked on the opening sentence.

Clare cut through the clustering adjectives.

"Stand up, please."

Resistance was over. She rose sullenly.

She had been proud of her essay, had worked at it sincerely, knew its periods by heart. But her pleasure in it was destroyed, as completely, she realised, as she had destroyed that of little Louise. More—for Louise had found a champion. That, she recognised jealously. Unjust! Her essay was no worse, read soberly—yet she was forced to render it ridiculous. She read a couple of pages in hurried jerks, stumbling over the illegibilities of her own handwriting, baulked by Clare's interpolations. She heard her own voice, high-pitched and out of control, perverting her meaning, felt the laden sentences breaking up into chaos on her lips. In her flurry she pronounced familiar words amiss, Clare's calm voice carefully correcting. Once she heard a chuckle. Two pages ... three ... only that ... she remembered that she had boasted of twenty ... seventeen to be read yet and they were all laughing. To have to stand there ... three pages.... "But as Childe Roland turned round——"

"Louder, please," said Clare.

"But as Childe Roland turned round——" and even Marion was laughing.... "Turned round to look once more back to the high road——"

"And slower."

"To the high road——" She stopped suddenly, a lump in her throat.

"Go on, Agatha."

"To the high road——" The letters danced up and down mistily. "To the high road where the cripple—where the cripple——Oh, Miss Hartill," she cried imploringly, "isn't it enough?"

It was surrender. Clare nodded.

"Yes, you may sit down now. Your essay, please: thank you. And now I'll read you, once more, what Louise has to say on the same subject. I dare say you'll find, Agatha, that you were almost as unfair to her essay, as you were to—your own." And she smiled her sudden dazzling smile. Agatha, against her will, smiled tremulously back.

Clare, with a glance at the little figure, huddling at the foot of the table, began to read. The essay, for all its schoolgirl slips and extravagances, was unusual. The thought embodied in it, though tinged with morbidity, striking and matured. Clare did it more than justice. Her beautiful voice made music of the crude sentences, revealed, embellished, glorified. Her own interest growing as she read, infected the class; she swept them along with her, mutually enthusiastic. She ended abruptly, her voice like the echoes of a deep bell.

Marion broke the little pause.

"I liked that," she said, as if surprised at herself.

"So did I," Clare was pleased.

She dipped her pen in red ink and initialled the foot of the essay.

"That was good work, Louise. Now, the others."

But Louise, shy and glowing, broke in—

"But it wasn't all mine, Miss Hartill, not a bit."

Clare looked at her, half frowning.

"Not yours? Your handwriting——?"

"Oh, I wrote it. But you've made it different. I hadn't meant it like that."

Clare raised a quizzical eyebrow.

"I have misinterpreted——?"

Louise was too much in earnest to be fluttered.

"I only mean—you made it sound so beautiful that it was like listening to—to an organ. I didn't bother about the words while you read. It was all colours and gold—like the things in the Venetian room. You know. The meaning didn't matter. But I did mean something, not half so good, of course, only quite different. Horrid and grizzly like the plain he travelled through, Childe Roland. It ought to have sounded harsh and starved, like rats pattering—what I meant—not beautiful."

"I see." Clare was interested. She was quite aware that she had used her magnificent voice to impress arbitrarily her opinion of Louise's work upon the class. That Louise, impressionable as she knew her to be, should have yet detected the trick, amused her greatly.

"So you think I didn't understand your essay?"

Louise's shy laugh was very pleasant.

"Oh, Miss Hartill. I'm not so stupid. It's only that I can't have got the—the——"

"Atmosphere!" The girl in spectacles helped her.

"The atmosphere that I meant to; so you put in a different one to help it. And it did. But it wasn't what I meant."

Clare glanced at her inscrutably, and began to score the other essays. She would get at Louise's meaning in her own way. She skimmed a couple, Agatha, be it recorded, receiving the coveted initials, before she spoke again.

"Didn't I tell you to learn Childe Roland, too? Ah, I thought so. Begin, Marion, while I finish these. Two verses."

Her pen scratched on, as Marion's expressionless voice rose, fell and finished. Agatha continued, jarringly dramatic. Two more followed her. Then Clare put down her pen.

"'For mark!'..."

There was a warning undertone in Louise's colourless voice, that crept across the room like a shadow. Clare lifted her head and stared at her.

"For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
Than, pausing to throw backward a last view
O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; grey plain all round:
Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.
I might go on; nought else remained to do."

There was horror in the whispering voice: the accents of one bowed beneath intolerable burdens, sick with the knowledge of nearing doom, gay with the flippancy of despair. Louise was looking straight before her, vacant as a medium, her hands lying laxly in her lap. Clare made a quick sign to her neighbour to be silent, and the strained voice rose anew.

Clare listened perplexedly. She told herself that this was sheer technique—some trick had been played, she was harbouring some child actress of parts—only to be convinced of folly. She knew all about Louise. Besides, she had heard the child read aloud before. Good, clean, intelligent delivery. But nothing like this—this was uncanny. Uncanny, yet magnificent. The artist in her settled down to enjoyment; yet she was uneasy, too.

"And just as far as ever from the end!"

The creeping voice toiled on across the haunted plain, growing louder, clearer, nearer.

Vision was forced upon Clare, serene in her form-room, swift and sudden vision. She not only heard, every sense responded. At her feet lay the waste land of the poem, she smelt the dank air, shrank from the clammy undergrowth, watched the bowed figure of the wandering knight, stumbling forwards doggedly. It was coming towards her, the outline blurred in the evening mist, the face hidden. The voice was surely his?

"Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled
Increasing like a bell."

She heard it alive with warning.

Nearer, ever nearer; the bowed form was at her very feet, as the voice rose anew in despairing defiance.

"To view the last of me——"

The helmeted head was flung back; the voice echoed from hill to hill—

"I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew. Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."

The figure fell, face upwards, at her feet. Clare tore at the visor with desperate hands, for at the last line, the strong voice had broken, quavering into the pitiful treble of a frightened child. The bars melted under her touch, as dream things will, and she was staring down at no bearded face, but at Louise. Louise herself, with blank, dead eyes in a broken, blood-flecked face. The dead mouth smiled.

"You see, that was what I meant, Miss Hartill. That atmosphere."

Clare roused herself with a start. Louise, rosily alive, and quivering with eagerness, was waiting for her comments. She got none.

"Begin again," said Clare mechanically, to the next girl.

The brightness died out of Louise's face, as she subsided in her seat. Clare, dazed as she was, saw it, and was touched. The child deserved praise—should not be punished for the vagaries of Clare's own phantasy. And the monkey could recite! She shook off the impression of that recital as best she could. Curious, the freaks of the imagination! She must tell Alwynne of the adventure—Alwynne, dreamer of dreams.... And Alwynne was interested in Louise; was coaching her.... Perhaps she was responsible ... had coached her in that very poem? She hoped not ... it would be interference.... She did not like interference. But no—that performance was entirely original, she felt sure. There was genius in the child—sheer genius ... and but for Clare herself, she would yet be rotting undeveloped in the Lower Third. She was pleased with herself, pleased with Louise too; ready to tell her so, to see the child's face light up again delightedly; she was less attractive in repose....

Clare's chance came.

It was the turn of the hockey captain to recite. She appealed to Clare.

"Oh, Miss Hartill! You said I needn't, Louise and I—because of all our extra work. Not the poem."

Clare considered.

"I remember. Very well. But Louise?" She looked at her questioningly, half smiling. "When did you find the time?"

Louise laughed.

"I don't know, Miss Hartill. It found itself."

"Ah! And how much extra work have you, Louise?"

Louise reflected.

"All the afternoons, I think. And three evenings when I go to lectures. And, of course, gallery days, when I make up in the evenings."

"And homework?"

"Oh, there's heaps of time at night always."

Clare smiled upon her class.

"Well, Lower Fifth—what do you think of it?"

The class opened its mouth.

"Louise is moved up four forms. She's thirteen. She's top of the class and first in to-day's results. You hear what her extra work is. And she finds time to learn Childe Roland—optional. What do you think of it?"

Agatha bit down her envy.

"It's pretty good," she said.

Clare's glance approved her.

"Yes. So I think. It's so good that I'm more than pleased. I'm—impressed. Rather proud of my youngest pupil. For next time you will learn——" And with one of her quick transitions, she began to dictate her homework.

The gong clanged as she finished. Alwynne's voice was heard in the passage, inquiring for Miss Hartill, and Clare hurried out. Followed a confused banging of books and desk-lids, a tangle of fragmentary remarks, and much trampling of boots on uncarpeted boards, as one after another followed her. Within five minutes the room was bare, save for Clare's forgotten satchel at the upper end of the big table, and Louise, motionless in her chair at the foot.