When Miriam sat talking everything over with the Pernes at supper, on the first night of the term, detached for ever from the things that engrossed them, the school-work, Julia Doyle’s future, the peculiarities of the visiting teachers, the problem of the “unnatural infatuation” of two of the boarders with each other, the pros and cons of a revolutionary plan for taking the girls in parties to the principal London museums, she made the most of her triumphant assertion that she had absolutely nothing in view. She found herself decorously waiting, armed at all points, through the silent interval while the Pernes took in the facts of her adventurous renunciation. She knew at once that she would have to be desperately determined.... But after all they could not do anything with her.

Sitting there, in the Perne boat, still taking an oar and determined to fling herself into the sea ... she ought not to have told them she was leaving them just desperately, without anything else in prospect; because they were so good, not like employers. They would all feel for her. It was just like speaking roughly at home. Well, it was done. She glanced about. Miss Haddie, across the table behind her habitual bowl of bread and milk had a face—the face of a child surprised by injustice. ‘I was right—I was right,’ Miriam gasped to herself as the light flowed in. ‘I’m escaping—just in time.... Emotional tyranny.... What a good expression ... that’s the secret of Miss Haddie. It was awful. She’s lost me. I’m free. Emotional tyranny.’ ... ‘My hat, Mirry, you’re beyond me. How much do you charge for that one. Say it again,’ she seemed to hear Gerald’s friendly voice. Go away Gerald. True. True. All the truth and meaning of her friendship with Miss Haddie in one single flash. How fearfully interesting life was. Miss Haddie wrestling with her, fighting for her soul; praying for her, almost driving her to the early service and always ready to quiver over her afterwards and to ask her if she had been happy.... And now angry because she was escaping. She appealed to Miss Deborah and met a flash of her beautiful soft piercing eyes. Her delicate features quivered and wrinkled almost to a smile. But Miss Deborah was afraid of Miss Jenny who was already thinking and embarking on little sounds. Miriam got away for a moment in a tumult, with Miss Deborah. ‘Oh,’ she shouted to her in the depths of her heart, ‘you are heavenly young. You know. Life’s like Robinson Crusoe. Your god’s a great big Robinson Crusoe. You know that anything may happen any minute. And it’s all right.’ She laughed and shook staring at the salt-cellar and then across at Miss Haddie whose eyes were full of dark fear. Miss Haddie was alone and outraged. ‘She thinks I’m a fraud besides being vulgar ... life goes on and she’ll wonder and wonder about me puzzled and alone.’ ... She smiled at her her broadest, happiest, home smile, one she had never yet reached at Banbury Park. Flushing scarlet Miss Haddie smiled in return.

“Eh—my dear girl,” Miss Jenny was saying diffidently at her side, “isn’t it a little unwise—very unwise—under the circumstances—with the difficulties—well, in fact with all ye’ve just told us—have ye thought?” When Miriam reached her broad smile Miss Jenny stopped and suddenly chuckled. “My dear Miriam! I don’t know. I suppose we don’t know ye. I suppose we haven’t really known ye as ye are. But come, have ye thought it out? No, ye haven’t,” she ended gravely, looking along the table and flicking with her forefinger the end of her little red nose.

Miriam glanced at her profile and her insecure disorderly bunch of hair. Miss Jenny was formidable. She would recommend certificates. Her eye wavered towards Miss Deborah.

“My dear Jenny,” said Miss Deborah promptly, “Miriam is not a child. She must do as she thinks best.”

“But don’t ye see my point, my dear Deborah? I don’t say she’s a child. She’s a madcap. That’s it.” She paused. “Of course I daresay she’ll fall on her feet. Ye’re a most extraordinary gel. I don’t know. Of course ye can come back—or stay here in yer holidays. Ye know that, my dear,” she concluded, suddenly softening her sharp little voice.

“I don’t want to go,” cried Miriam with tear-filled eyes. They were one person in the grip of a decision. Miss Haddie sat up and moved her elbows about. All four pairs of eyes held tears. “My dear—I wish we could give ye more, Miriam,” murmured Miss Jenny; “we don’t want to lose ye, ye’ve pulled the lower school together in a remarkable way”; Miss Deborah was drawing little breaths of protest at this descent into gross detail; “the children are interested. We hear that from the parents. We shall be able to give ye excellent testimonials.”

“Oh, I don’t care about that,” responded Miriam desperately. ‘Fancy—Great Scott—parents—behind all my sore throats—I’ve never heard about that. It’s all coming out now,’ she thought.

“Well—my dear—now——” began Miss Jenny hesitatingly. Feeling herself slipping, Miriam clung harshly to her determination and drew herself up to offer the set of the pretty blouse Gerald and Harriett had bought her in Brighton as a seal on her irrevocable decision to break with Banbury Park. It was a delicate sheeny green silk, with soft tuckers.

“What steps have ye taken?” asked Miss Jenny in a quizzical business-like tone.

“It’s very kind of you,” said Miriam formally, and went on to hint vaguely and convincingly at the existence of some place in a family in the country that would be sure to fall to her lot through the many friends to whom Eve had written on her behalf, turning away from the feast towards the freedom of the untenanted part of the room. The sitting had to be brought to an end.... In a moment she would be utterly routed.... Her lame statements were the end of the struggle. She knew she was demonstrating in her feeble broken tones a sort of blind strength they knew nothing of and that they would leave it at that, whatever they thought, if only there were no more talk.

2

When they had left the room and Flora came in for the supper things, instead of sitting as usual at the far end of the table pretending to read, she stood planted on the hearthrug watching her. Flora’s hands were small and pale and serenely despairing like her face. She cleared the table quietly. She had nothing to hope for. She did not know she had nothing to hope for. Whatever happened she would go quietly on doing things ... in the twilight ... on a sort of edge. People would die. Perhaps people had already died in her family. But she would always be the same. One day she would die, perhaps of something hard and slow and painful with that small yellowish constitution.

She would not be able to go on looking serene and despairing with people round her bed helping her. When she died she would wait quietly with nothing to do, blind and wondering. Death would take her into a great festival—things for her for herself. She would not believe it and would put up her hands to keep it off. But it would be all round her in great laughter, like the deep roaring and crying of a flood. Then she would cry like a child.

Why was it that for some people, for herself, life could be happy now. It was possible now to hear things laugh just by setting your teeth and doing things; breaking into things, chucking things about, refusing to be held. It made even the dreadful past seem wonderful. All the days here, the awful days, each one awful and hateful and painful.

Flora had gathered up her tray and disappeared, quietly closing the door. But Flora had known and somehow shared her triumph, felt her position in the school as she stood planted and happy in the middle of the Pernes’ hearthrug.

3

“An island is a piece of land entirely surrounded by water.”

Miriam kept automatically repeating these words to herself as the newly returned children clung about her the next morning in the schoolroom. It was a morning of heavy wind and rain and the schoolroom was dark, and chilly with its summer-screened fireplace. The children seemed to her for the first time small and pathetic. She was deserting them. After fifteen months of strange intimacy she was going away for ever.

During the usual routine days the little girls always seemed large and formidable. She was quite sure they were not so to the other teachers, and she hesitated when she thought over this difference, between the explanation which accounted for their size and redoubtableness by her own feebleness and the one to which she inclined when she felt her success as a teacher.

She had discovered that the best plan was to stand side by side with the children in face of the things they had to learn, treating them as equals and fellow-adventurers, giving explanations when these were necessary, as if they were obvious and might have been discovered by the children themselves, never as if they were possessions of her own, to be imparted, never claiming a knowledge superior to their own. ‘The business of the teacher is to make the children independent, to get them to think for themselves, and that’s much more important than whether they get to know facts,’ she would say irrelevantly to the Pernes whenever the question of teaching came up. She bitterly resented their vision of children as malleable subordinates. And there were many moments when she seemed to be silently exchanging this determination of hers with her pupils. Good or bad, she knew it was the secret of her influence with them, and so long as she was faithful to it both she and they enjoyed their hours together. Very often she was tired, feeble with fatigue and scamping all opportunities; this too they understood and never took advantage of her. One or two of them would even when she failed try to keep things going on her own method. All this was sheer happiness to her, the bread and wine of her days.

But now and again, perhaps during the mid-morning recess, this impersonal relationship gave way and the children clung fawning all round her, passionately competing for nearness, touching and clinging and snatching for kisses. There was no thought or uprightness or laughter then, their hands were quick and eloquent and their eyes wide and deeply smiling with those strange women’s smiles. Sometimes she could respond in kind, answering to their smiles and caresses, making gentle foolish sounds and feeling their passion rise to a frenzy of adoration. The little deprecating consoling sounds that they made as they clung told her that if she chose steadily to remain always gentle and deprecating and consoling and reproachful she could dominate them as persons and extort in the long run a complete personal obedience to herself, so that they would do their work for her sake and live by and through her, adoring her—as a goddess—and hating her. Even as they fawned she knew they were fighting between their aching desire for a perfection of tenderness in her and their fear lest she should fulfil the desire. She was always tempted for an instant to yield and fling herself irrevocably into the abyss, letting the children go on one by one into the upper school, carrying as her gift only a passionate memory such as she herself had for one of her nursemaids; leaving her downstairs with an endless succession of new loves, different, but always the same. She would become like a kind of nun, making a bare subsistence, but so beloved always, so quivering and tender and responsive that human love would never fail her, and when strength failed there would be hands held out to shelter her decline. But the vision never held her for more than a moment. There was something in the thought of such pure personal sentiment that gave her a feeling of treachery towards the children. Mentally she flung them out and off, made them stand upright and estranged. She could not give them personal love. She did not want to; nor to be entangled with them. They were going to grow up into North London women, most of them loudly scorning everything that was not materially profitable; these would remember her with pity—amusement. A few would escape. These would remember her at strange moments that were coming for them, moments when they would recognise the beauty of things like ‘the Psalm of Life’ that she had induced them to memorise without understanding it.

This morning a sense of their softness and helplessness went to her heart. She had taught them so little. But she had forced them to be impersonal. Almost savagely she had done that. She had never taken them by a trick....

4

And now they were going to be Julia’s children.

Julia would teach them—alone there in the room with them, filling the room for them—in her own way....

There would be no more talk about general ideas....

She would have to keep on the “object” lessons, because the Pernes had been so pleased with the idea and the children had liked them. There would still be those moments, with balls for the solar system and a candle for the sun, and the blinds down. But there would not be anything like that instant when all the eyes round the table did nothing but watch the movement of a shadow on a ball ... the relief afterwards, the happiness and the moment of intense love in the room—never to be forgotten, all of them knowing each other, all their differences gone away, even the clever watchful eyes of the cheating little Jewess, real and unconscious for a moment. Julia would be watching the children as much as the shadow, and the children would never quite forget Julia. She would get to know a great deal about the children, but there would be no reverence for big cold outside things. She would teach them to be kind. “Little dorlings.” She thought all children were darlings and talked to them all in her wheedling, coaxing, adoring way. If one or two were not, it was the fault of the way they were treated, something in the ‘English’ way of dealing with them. Nearly all the elder girls she disapproved of, they were no longer children—they were English. She was full of contempt and indignant laughter for them, and of pity for the ‘wee things’ who were growing up. Yet she got on with them all and had the secret of managing them without letting them see her feelings.

There was something specially bad in the English way of bringing up children. Not the ‘education’ exactly, but something else, something in the way they were treated. Something in the way they were brought up made English women so awful—with their smiles. Julia did not smile or smirk. She laughed a great deal, often to tears. And she would often suddenly beam. It was like a light coming from under her thick white skin. Was Julia the answer to the awfulness of Englishwomen? If, as Julia said, the children were all right and only the girls and grown-ups awful, it must be something in the way the children were treated.

5

Yet Julia was not impersonal.

Miss Deborah, ... teaching the whole school to be ‘good’ in the Fairchild way; with her beautiful quivering nodding black head held high—blinking, and not looking at the girls separately—in a grave voice, full of Scripture history, but broken all the time, quivering with laughter and shoutings which she never uttered ... hilarious, ... she taught a system of things she had been brought up in. But all the same, she rushed along sweeping the girls with her ... and the girls believed her. If I taught her system I should have false lips and the girls would not believe me. If ever anyone had the courage to tell her of any dreadful thing, she would weep it all away; and the person would begin all over again certainly, as much as possible in the Fairchild way ... again and again until they died. Supposing a murderer came and sat down in the hall? Supposing Miss Deborah had been brought up as a Thug—killing people from behind?...

Miss Jenny, exasperatedly trying to wake all the girls up to the importance of public life, sitting round in their blouses and skirts, half-amused and sometimes trying to argue, because the tone of Miss Jenny’s voice made them sorry for the other side. Politics, politics, reading history and the newspapers, the importance of history if you wanted to have any understanding of your own times. To come into the room to take the class after Miss Jenny always meant finding her stating and protesting and tapping the end of her nose, and the air hot and excited, and the girls in some sort of state of excitement which could only be got over by being very quiet and pretending not to notice them except to be very surprised if there were any disturbance.

Miss Haddie, in horror of their badness, teaching them to master little set tasks because it was shocking to be an idler; loving the sinner but hating the sin much more, with a sort of horror like a girl, a horror in her eyes that was the same as the horror of insects, fearing God who was so close in the room, gloomily, all the time—wanting to teach them all to fawn on Christ. Christ would make everything all right if you made up to him. “Faint not nor fear, his arms are near. He faileth not and thou art dear.” Awful....

And then Julia, making the children love her, herself, as a person. They would all love her in time. Even Burra after her first grief would fling herself upon Julia.... Gertie would not though, ever. Cold, quiet little Gertie, the doctor’s daughter. She would make no response however much she were kissed and called a little darling. Gertie even as a child was the English thing that Julia disliked. Julia, with all her success was not the answer to the problem of why Englishwomen were abominable. She left out so much. “Julia, you know, I think things are more important than people. Much more. People, if you let them for one single instant, grin and pounce upon you and try to make you forget things. But they’re there all the time and you have to go back to them,” and Julia laughing suddenly aloud, “Ah—you’re a duck—a tonic.” And everyone was a little afraid of Julia, the children, the boarders whom she managed so high-handedly with her laughter, even the Pernes.

6

Perhaps Julia’s ‘personal’ way and the English ‘personal’ way were somehow both wrong and horrid ... girls’ schools were horrid, bound to be horrid, sly, mean, somehow tricky and poisonous. It was a hopeless problem. The English sentimental way was wrong, the way of Englishwomen with children—it made them grow up with those treacherous smiles.

The scientific and ‘Æsthetic’ way, the way of the Putney school—ah, blessed escape!... But it left nearly all the girls untouched.

Julia’s sentimental way was better than the English sentimental way; its smiles had tears and laughter too, they were not so hypocritical. But it was wrong. It was the strongest thing though in the Wordsworth House school.

7

Julia was not happy. She dreamed fearful dreams.... Why did she speak of them as if they were something that no one in this English world into which she had come would understand? She had her strange nights all to herself there across the landing; either lying awake or sleeping and moaning all the time. The girls in her room slept like rocks and did not know that she moaned. They knew she had nightmares and sometimes cried out and woke them. But passing the open door late at night one could hear her moaning softly on every breath with closed lips. That was Julia, her life, all laid bare, moaning.... She knows she is alive and that there is no escape from being alive. But it has never made her feel breathless with joy. She laughs all day, at everybody and everything, and at night when she is naked and alone she moans; moan, moan, moan, heart-broken; wind and rain alone in the dark in a great open space.

She sometimes hinted at things, those real unknown things that were her own life unshared by anybody; in a low soft terrible broken voice, with eyes dilated and quivering lips; quite suddenly, with hardly any words. And she would speak passionately about the sea, how she hated it and could not look at it or listen to it; and of woods, the horror of woods, the trees and the shadowiness, making her crisp her hands—ah yes, les mains crispÉes, that was the word; and she had laughed when it was explained to her. It was not that she had troubles at home. Those things she seemed to find odd and amusing, like a story of the life of some other person—poverty and one of her sisters ‘very peculiar,’ another engaged to a scamp and another going to be a shop-assistant, and two more, ‘doties’ very young, being brought up in the country with an aunt. Everything that happened to people and all the things people did seemed to her funny and amusing, “tickled her to death.” Harriett’s engagement amused her really, though she pretended to be immensely interested and asked numbers of questions in a rich deep awe-struck voice ... blarney.... But she wanted to hear everything, and she never forgot anything she was told. And she had been splendid about the operation—really anxious, quite conscious and awake across the landing that awful night and really making you feel she was glad afterwards. “Poor Mrs. Henderson—I was never so glad in my life”—and always seeming to know her without having her explained. She was real there, and so strange in telling the Pernes about it and making it all easy.

8

Miriam leaned upon Julia more and more as the term went on, hating and fearing her for her secret sorrow and wondering and wondering why she appeared to have such a curious admiration and respect for herself. She could understand her adoration for the Pernes; she saw them as they were and had a phrase which partly explained them, “no more knowledge of the world than babes”—but what was it in herself that Julia seemed so fiercely and shyly to admire?

She knew she could not let Julia know how she enjoyed washing her hands, in several soapings, in the cold water, before dinner. They would go their favourite midday walk, down the long avenue in the park through the little windings of the shrubbery and into the chrysanthemum show, strolling about in the large green-house, all the girls glad of the escape from a set walk, reading over every day the strange names on the little wooden stakes, jokes and gigglings and tiresomenesses all kept within bounds by the happiness that there was, inside the great quiet steamy glass-house, in the strange raw bitter scent of the great flowers, in the strange huge way they stood, and with all their differences of shape and colour staring quietly at you, all in the same way with one expression. They were startling, amongst their grey leaves; and they looked startled and held their heads as if they knew they were beautiful. The girls always hurried to get to the chrysanthemums and came away all of them walking in twos relieved and happy back through the cold park to dinner. But Julia, who loved the flowers, though she made fun of their names in certain moods and dropped them sotto voce into the general conversation at the dinner-table would have, Miriam felt sure, scorned her own feeling of satisfaction in the great hand-washing and the good dinner. And she detested pease pudding with the meat, and boiled suet pudding with treacle.

9

She ate scarcely anything herself, keeping her attention free and always seeming to be waiting for someone to say something that was never said. Her broad-shouldered, curiously buoyant, heavy, lounging, ill-clad form, her thick white skin, her eyes like a grey-blue sea, her dark masses of fine hair had long been for Miriam the deepest nook in the meal-time gatherings—she rested there unafraid of anything the boarders might say or do. She would never be implicated. Julia would take care of that, heading everything off and melting up the difficulties into some absurdity that would set all the Pernes talking. Julia lounged easily there, controlling the atmosphere of the table. And the Pernes knew it unconsciously, they must know it; any English person would know it ... though they talked about her untidiness and lack of purpose and application. Julia was a deep, deep nook, full of thorns.

10

Julia had spoiled the news of Sarah’s engagement to Bennett Brodie. It had been such a wonderful moment. The thick envelope coming at midday in Bennett’s hand-writing—such a surprise—asking Miss Perne’s permission to read it at the dinner-table—reading the startling sentences in the firm curved hand—‘assert my privilege as your prospective brother-in-law by announcing that I’m on the track of a job that I think will suit you down to the ground,’ the curious splash, gravy on the cloth as somebody put the great dish on the table, far-away vexation and funny familiar far-away discomfort all round the table, ‘no more of this until I’ve got full particulars on the tapis; but it may, oh Grecian Mariamne, not be without interest to you to hear that that sister of yours does not appear to be altogether averse to taking over the management of the new house and the new practice and the new practitioner, and that the new practitioner is hereby made anew in a sense that is more of an amazement to him than it doubtless will be to your intuitive personality. That life had such happiness in store for him is not the least of the many surprises that have come his way. He can only hope to prove not unworthy; and so a hearty au revoir from yours affectionately.’ ... Then Bennett would always be there amongst the home things ... with his strange way of putting things; he would give advice and make suggestions ... and Sarah’s letter ... a glance at it showing short sentences, things spoken in a low awe-struck voice.... ‘We had been to an entertainment together.... Coming home along the avenue. I was so surprised. He was so quiet and serious and humble.’ ... All the practical things gone away in a moment, leaving only a sound of deep music, ... mornings and evenings. Sarah alone now, at last, a person, with mornings and evenings and her own reality in everything. No one could touch her or interfere any more. She was standing aside, herself. She would always be Sarah, someone called Sarah. She need never worry any more, but go on doing things.... And then looking up and finding all the table eagerly watching and saying suddenly to Miss Perne ‘another of my sisters is engaged’ and everybody, even Trixie and Beadie, excited and interested.

The news, the great great news, wonderful Sarah away somewhere in the background with her miracle—telling it out to the table of women was a sort of public announcement that life was moving out on to wider levels. They all knew it, pinned there; and how dear and glad they were, for a moment, making it real, acknowledging by their looks how wonderful it was. Sarah, floating above them all, caught up out of the darkness of everyday life.... And then Julia’s eyes—veiled for a moment while she politely stirred and curved her lips to a smile—cutting through it all, seeming to say that nothing was really touched or changed. But when the table had turned to jealousy and resentment and it was time to pretend to hide the shaft of light and cease to listen to the music, Julia, cool and steady, covered everything up and made conversation.

12

And the thought of Julia was always a disturbance in going to tea with the Brooms. Grace Broom was the only girl in the school for whom she had an active aversion. She put one or two questions about them, ‘You really like going there?’ ‘You’ll go on seeing them after you leave?’ and concluded carelessly ‘that’s a mystery to me——’

Sitting at tea shut in in the Brooms’ little dining-room with the blinds down and the dark red rep curtains drawn and the gas-light and brilliant fire-light shining on the brilliantly polished davenport in the window-space and the thick bevelled glass of the Satsuma-laden mahogany sideboard, the dim cracked oil-painting of Shakespeare above the mantel-shelf, the dark old landscapes round the little walls, the new picture of Queen Victoria leaning on a stick and supported by Hindu servants, receiving a minister, the solid silver tea-service, the fine heavily edged linen table-cover, the gleaming, various, delicately filled dishes, the great bowl of flowers, the heavy, carven, unmoved, age-long dreaming faces of the three women with their living interested eyes, she would suddenly, in the midst of a deep, calm undisturbing silence become aware of Julia. Julia would not be impressed by the surroundings, the strange silent deeps of the room. She would discover only that she was with people who revered “our Queen” and despised “the working classes.” It would be no satisfaction to her to sit drinking from very exquisite old china, cup after cup of delicious very hot tea, laughing to tears over the story of the curate who knelt insecurely on a high kneeling stool at evening service in a country church and crashing suddenly down in the middle of a long prayer went on quietly intoning from the floor, or the madeira cake that leapt from the cake-dish on an at-home day and rolled under the sofa. She would laugh, but she would look from face to face, privately, and wonder. She would not really like the three rather dignified seated forms with the brilliant, tear-filled eyes, sitting on over tea, telling anecdotes, and tales of long strange illnesses suffered by strange hidden people in quiet houses, weddings, deaths, the stories of families separated for life by quarrels over money, stories of far-off holidays in the country; strange sloping rooms and farmhouse adventures; the cow that walked into the bank in a little country town.... Mrs. Philps’ first vision, as a bride, of the English Lakes, the tone of her voice as she talked about all these things.

The getting together and sitting about and laughing in the little room would never be to her like being in a world that was independent of all the other worlds. She would not want to go again and again and sit, just the four women, at tea, talking. The silent, beautifully kept, experienced old furniture all over the house would not fill her with fear and delight and strength. It would be no satisfaction to her to put on her things in front of the huge plate glass of the enormous double-fronted wardrobe in the spare-room with its old Bruges ware and its faded photographs of the interiors of unknown churches, rows and rows of seats and a faded blur where the altar was, thorn-crowned heads and bold scrolly texts embroidered in crimson and gold silken mounted and oak-framed. And when she went home alone along the quiet, dark, narrow, tree-filled little roadways she would not feel gay and strong and full of personality.

13

On prize-giving day, Miriam’s last day, Julia seemed to disappear. For the first time since she had come to the school it was as if she were not there. She was neither talking nor watching nor steering anything at all. Again and again during the ceremonies Miriam looked at her sitting or moving about, pale and plain and shabby, one of the crowd of girls.

The curious power of the collected girls, their steady profiles, their movements, their unconcerned security rose and flooded round Miriam as it had done when she first came to the school. But she no longer feared it. It was going on, harsh and unconscious and determined, next term. She was glad of it; the certainty thrilled her; she wanted to convey some of her gladness to Julia, but could not catch her eye.

Her gladness carried her through the most tedious part of the day’s performances, the sitting in a listening concourse, doors open, in the schoolroom, while some ten of the girls went one by one with stricken faces into the little drawing-room and played the piece they had learned during the term. Their shame and confusion, the anger and desperation of their efforts, the comments of the listeners and their violent ironic applause roused her to an intensity of sympathy. How they despised the shame-faced tinkling; how they admired the martyrs.

Their strong indifference seemed to centre in the cold pale scornful face of Jessie Wheeler, sitting squarely there with defiant eyes, waiting for the future; the little troop of children she dreamed of.

These North London girls would be scornful mocking fiancÉes. They would be adored by their husbands. Secretly they would forget their husbands in their houses and children and friends.

14

Julia was the last player. She sidled swiftly out of the room; even her habitual easy halting lounge seemed to have deserted her; and almost at once, slow and tragic and resignedly weeping came the opening notes of Chopin’s Funeral March. Sitting in the front row of the little batch of children from the lower school who faced the room from the window bay, Miriam saw, in fancy, Julia’s face as she sat at the drawing-room piano—the face she had when she talked of the woods and the sea. The whole of the long march, including the major passage, was the voice of Julia’s strange desolation. She played painfully, very slowly and carefully, with tender respectful attention, almost without emphasis. She was not in the least panic-stricken; anyone could feel that; but she had none of the musical assurance that would have filled the girls with uneasy admiration and disgust. They were pleased and amused. And far away, Julia was alone with life and death. She made two worlds plain, the scornful world of the girls and her own shadow-filled life.

Miriam longed for the performance to be at an end so that the girls might reassert themselves.

15

An important stirring was going on at the little table where Miss Cramp sat with the Pernes; only their heads and shoulders showing above the piles of prize-books. Miss Perne stood up and faced the room smiling and gently muttering. Presently her voice grew clear and she was making little statements and pronouncing names, clearly and with gay tender emphasis, the names of tall bold girls in the first class. One by one they struggled to the table and stood gentle and disturbed with flushed enlightened faces. Not a single girl could stand unconcerned before Miss Perne. Even Polly Allen’s brow was shorn of its boldness.

The girls knew. They would remember something of what the Pernes had tried to give them.

The room was unbearably stuffy. The prize-giving was at an end. Miriam’s own children had struggled to the table and come back to her for the last time.

Miss Perne was making a little speech ... about Miss Henderson’s forthcoming departure. Why did people do these formal things? She would be expected to make some response. For a moment she had the impulse to get up and rush away through the hall, get upstairs and pack and send for a four-wheeler. But from behind came hands dragging at a fold of her dress and the sound of Burra’s hard sobbing. She felt the child’s head bowed against her hip. A child at her side twisted its hands together and sat with its head held high, drawing sharp breaths. Miss Perne’s voice went on. She was holding up an umbrella, a terrible, expensive, silver-mounted one. The girls had subscribed.

Miriam sat with beating heart waiting for Miss Perne’s voice to cease, pressing back towards the support of Burra and other little outstretched clutchings and the general snuffling of her class, grappling with the amazement of hearing from various quarters of the room violent and repeated nose-blowings, and away near the door in the voice of a girl she had hardly spoken to a deep heavy contralto sobbing.

Presently she was on her feet with the tightly-rolled silken twist of the umbrella heavy in her hands. Her stiff lips murmured incoherent thanks in a strange thin voice—Harriett’s voice with the life gone from it.

Note.—A further instalment of this book is in preparation.

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