
* A Project Gutenberg Canada Ebook *

This ebook is made available at no cost and with very few
restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make
a change in the ebook (other than alteration for different
display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of
the ebook. If either of these conditions applies, please
check gutenberg.ca/links/licence.html before proceeding.

This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be
under copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada,
check your country's copyright laws. IF THE BOOK IS UNDER
COPYRIGHT IN YOUR COUNTRY, DO NOT DOWNLOAD
OR REDISTRIBUTE THIS FILE.

Title: Swiss Sonata
Author: Graham, Gwethalyn (1913-1965)
Date of first publication: 1938
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1938
   [first U.S. edition]
Date first posted: 31 January 2018
Date last updated: 31 January 2018
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1502

This ebook was produced by
Al Haines, Mark Akrigg, Cindy Beyer
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






SWISS SONATA

by Gwethalyn Graham




_To_ F. E-B. _and_ I. R. E-B.





CONTENTS

Part One
THURSDAY

Part Two
FRIDAY

Part Three
SATURDAY




PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

THE STAFF

  Amlie Tourain (Lausanne, Switzerland)
  Rose Dupraix (Geneva, Switzerland)
  Sylvia Lange (Zrich, Switzerland)
  Henriette Devaux (Neuchtel, Switzerland)
  Isabelle Lemaitre (Clermont, France)
  Mary Ellerton (London, England)
  Elizabeth Williams (Kent, England)

THE GIRLS

  Vicky Morrison (Toronto, Canada)
  Theodora Cohen (St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.)
  Ilse Brning (Saarbrcken)
  Anna von Landenburg (Nrnberg, Germany)
  Rosalie Garcenot (Montreal, Canada)
  Truda Meyer (Essen, Germany)
  Consuelo Deane (San Paolo, Brazil)
  Yasha Livovna (Warsaw, Poland)
  Maria-Teresa Tucci (Genoa, Italy)
  Marian Comstock (Port Elizabeth, South Africa)
  Natalia Babaian (Brussels, Belgium)
  Aime Babaian (Paris, France)
  Ina Barron (Brighton, England)
  Cissie Anderson (Manchester, England)
  Ruth Anderson (Manchester, England)
  Elsa Michielsen (Copenhagen, Denmark)
  Christina Erichsen (Oslo, Norway)
  Gretel Arnsbach (Berlin, Germany)
  Lotta Grosz (Berlin, Germany)
  Catherine Shaunessy (Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.)




PART ONE
THURSDAY




CHAPTER I


1

Pensionnat Les Ormes stands on the hill which rises above Lausanne so
that it seems to overlook the world. Beyond the town is the Lake of
Geneva; beyond the lake, the mountains of France. Somewhere across that
stretch of water which separates Switzerland from France, somewhere
behind those high hills are the Atlantic, America and England; up to the
right lie Holland and Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Germany; down
to the left where the Rhone runs out is Italy, and at your back, across
the Alps, are Austria, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. Each year
the girls who come from all over the world to Pensionnat Les Ormes,
perched on its hill-side, stand at their windows and look out over the
lake, watching the autumn mists creep down from the Dent du Midi and
obscuring the little villages of France. Then for months snow lies heavy
on the world spread out beneath them, until at last the clouds come down
from the peaks to float low along the shores and patches of green appear
here and there; above the vague sounds of motor cars and lorries
changing gear as they climb upwards come the cow-bells, clear and sweet.
The boatmen of Ouchy, Montreux, Vevey and the little villages across the
lake in France get out their barges, and once more the girls in
Pensionnat Les Ormes linger at their windows watching them sail down the
long broad lake from Geneva to the Rhone, or making their interminable
lazy trips from Thonon to Evian.

They are in the heart of the world, yet curiously out of it, for no
sound from Lausanne reaches them very clearly. Rather it is as though
the town noises get lost in coming up across the playing fields and
tennis courts, and by the time they reach the sloping terraces which
flank the building there is nothing left of them but a suggestion that
there is life and activity down in Lausanne, below this suspended little
world on the hill-side.

The main door of the school is on the side away from the town. The drive
leading to it is long, cutting straight across between the tennis courts
after it leaves the big wooden gates, then curving round the extreme
edge of the gardens until, after a long, straight stretch up the slope,
it ends in the courtyard by the front door. It takes about five minutes'
fast walking to get from the gates to the grateful seclusion of the
court during which you become thoroughly self-conscious as you notice
the eyes watching you from the windows. Once you reach the corner of the
house you are safe. You ring the bell, which is answered after a while
by a young Swiss girl who shows you into a drawing-room filled with
brocade furniture and lithographs of genteel young ladies. On the
mantelpiece is an ormolu clock which says seven minutes past three; you
hastily consult your watch which says a quarter to four, wonder rather
vaguely if it has gained, and settle down to wait. Every little while
you look at that clock which continues to say seven minutes past three,
but when Miss Ellerton comes in to inquire your business you forget
about it altogether, in your surprise at finding anyone who looks like
that in a Swiss pensionnat.

If you _were_ to say anything about the clock, Miss Ellerton would tell
you that it had been bequeathed along with six teaspoons, a Pekinese dog
and many volumes on tropical fish to Mlle d'Ormonde, cousin of Amlie
Tourain the present headmistress, who had the school for twenty years
before her, by her aunt who founded Pensionnat Les Ormes, and that it
had stopped on its entrance to the school in the spring of 1884. Some
day they are going to get it mended but at present they are too busy,
for Mlle Tourain is correcting proofs for the second volume of her work
on the history of Swiss independence, which will appear next autumn, and
she, Mary Ellerton, has no time for anything, since she dismissed the
housekeeper and has her job as well as that of assistant principal.
Would you like to see the school?

2

All the rooms on the ground floor open off the T-shaped front hall.
When you come in from the courtyard the doors of Mlle Tourain's study
are directly opposite you; on your right are the kitchens and
laundry-rooms and between them and the study, occupying the whole
corner, is the dining-room. On your left, behind the big dark staircase
which curves up to the first floor, is the girls' living-room, and in
front of it on the south-east corner, the main classroom. The
dining-room, study, drawing-room and classroom all face south, through
wide french windows which extend from the ceiling to within a foot of
the floor and which overlook the terraces, gardens, tennis courts,
Lausanne, and the Lake of Geneva.

The bedrooms on the three floors above are all more or less alike, with
white woodwork, flowered wall-paper with a white background, light oak
furniture and two white basins set in an alcove at the back of each room
with a cupboard on either side, so that the only dark place in the
school is the main entrance hall, which is poorly lit by small, stained
glass windows on the north side of the house. There is nothing to be
seen from those windows in any case but the courtyard, the steep slope
of the hill, a few scattered houses and institutions... an orphanage,
an insane asylum, a jail, and more schools.

There are several hundred schools in and about Lausanne, Geneva, Vevey,
Montreux and Neuchtel to which boys and girls of all nationalities have
come during the past fifty or sixty years to receive instruction in
French, deportment, winter sports and internationalism. Pensionnat Les
Ormes was founded in 1884 by Jeanne d'Ormonde's aunt, she who later
bequeathed to her niece the ormolu clock, but the present building was
erected by Jeanne herself in 1920. She was a quiet-mannered gentlewoman
who was never able to reconcile herself to the sight of fifty young
ladies ski-ing in trousers.

In 1930 she fell ill and appointed Amlie Tourain, her cousin, whose
life had until that time been devoted to historical research, to take
her place. For four years her successor remained in her study with her
back to the china shepherdesses, cactus plants and potpourri jars with
which Mlle d'Ormonde had seen fit to ornament her glassed-in bookcases,
which ran along the west wall of the study and continued down the north
wall as far as the door leading into the hall. Mlle d'Ormonde could not
be said to have benefited greatly by the wills of her relatives; the
husband of her aunt had found the atmosphere of a girls' school
intolerable and retired to a small cottage in Gruyre where he devoted
the remainder of his life to the study of tropical fish. It was from him
that Jeanne d'Ormonde, upon the death of her aunt, had acquired the
books; the rest of his belongings he had sold at public auction and
given the proceeds to charity.

During her five years as assistant to her aunt, Jeanne d'Ormonde had
frequently visualized herself sitting in the study, behind a large and
imposing desk, aiding and inspiring her girls with a background of
books, but her entire collection burned with the old building in 1920.
There was nothing for it then but to install the fifteen hundred volumes
on tropical fish. This she did, but had a cabinet-maker put on glass
doors with very small leaded panes, to make it more difficult to read
the titles, and to distract attention from them she covered the tops of
the bookcases with cactus plants and china ornaments.

When Amlie Tourain came to take her cousin's place in 1930, she was
mildly astonished at Jeanne's choice of literature. She had not known
the uncle in Gruyre; her life in the little house at the end of the
lane which ran down from Avenue Ruchonnet had been remote and tranquil,
undisturbed by family antagonisms. After a glance sufficient to tell her
that all the books dealt with this curious subject, and two dismayed
glances at the china shepherdesses and cactus plants, she called one of
the maids and with her help turned the big desk which had always stood
with its back to the french windows facing the door, so that it now
stood with its back to the bookcases and faced the folding doors which
separated the study from the drawing-room. Then she sat down to think.

For four years she sat there, waiting for Jeanne to get better. Her
honour and her sense of duty forbade her to find a substitute and
retreat to her house off Avenue Ruchonnet, for she had promised Jeanne
that she would stay until she was well again and able to come back. At
the same time, the thought of abandoning her own work was intolerable,
so for those four years she tried unsuccessfully to do both.

On Thursday, January 10th, 1935, she suddenly became dissatisfied with
the school, herself... in fact her whole life as she was living it at
that time... and called a special staff-meeting for three-thirty,
although the regular weekly meeting was scheduled for eight o'clock that
evening.

The next three days were to determine the course of her future,
although, at the time, she was only partially aware of their difference
from the thousand other days she had spent in the study, and it was not
until Saturday, January 12th, the day before the Saar elections, that
she was able to see the relationship which so strangely existed between
the personal life of Mary Ellerton, the games mistress; the tragedy of
Rosalie Garcenot; Anna von Landenburg, Ilse Brning, Vicky Morrison...
and herself.

3

At twenty-nine minutes to four the teaching staff of Pensionnat Les
Ormes met at the door of the study, came in together, and stood about
awkwardly for a while, waiting for the headmistress, who was apparently
lost in thought, to take some notice of them. She and Jeanne d'Ormonde
were approximately the same age, but whereas Mlle d'Ormonde was small
and delicately beautiful, with a black velvet ribbon always at her
throat, her cousin Amlie Tourain was fairly tall, with greying brown
hair piled on the top of her head, and no pretence to beauty of any
sort. Her nose was broad and slightly aquiline, her skin naturally
rather sallow, and sallowed still further by the rusty browns and blacks
of her clothes. She took no interest in her appearance, and combined
shapeless brown wool dresses with black or grey jerseys and shawls
indiscriminately, without noticing the effect she created, exactly as
she sat now, at her desk, unaware of her surroundings and either unaware
of or indifferent to the presence of her staff. These, after more
hesitations, settled down in the straight-backed chairs which Mlle
Tourain had brought in from the dining-room and arranged in a
semi-circle before her desk.

Her black eyes swept over them in one comprehensive glance: she saw that
Mlle Devaux's face had that mottled look which always betrayed her
nervousness; realized that Rose Dupraix, who was sitting with her hands
folded and her mouth set in a way designed to be pleasant, would oppose
her politely yet vindictively no matter what she said, deploring any
irregularity, disapproving of any action on the part of Amlie Tourain
as she always did, wondered fleetingly what was the matter with Frulein
Lange to make her look so childishly and pathetically upset; observed
with moderate satisfaction that Miss Williams at least looked as usual,
and experienced her usual slight irritation at the sight of Mlle
Lemaitre's thin, feverish face. The woman was as good a scholar as
herself, so why was she so lacking in ordinary common sense that she
could not take care of her health? That was the trouble with the whole
French nation; they were, beyond a shadow of doubt, the most highly
educated and intelligent race on earth but with faces like pastrycooks!
They never ate the right food, never got enough exercise nor went out of
doors if they could help it, kept their shutters closed at night,
neglected their bodies for the sake of their minds from kindergarten
onwards, and what was the result? A nation running on nervous energy,
without stamina, without vitality... without ordinary common sense!

Her eyes reached Miss Ellerton, the games mistress, who, after a few
impatient glances in Mlle Tourain's direction, had got up from her chair
and wandered over to the french windows where she was standing now,
holding the curtain back with one hand and looking over the lovely grey
town where dusk already lurked here and there. Some of the light which
yet remained in the outer world was caught in her hair and outlined her
small features so that the others, sitting patiently in their chairs,
were aged by their contrasting dullness. Amlie Tourain leaned forward a
little and switched on her desk light, then remained motionless looking
at the girl by the window. An unaccountable conviction that Miss
Ellerton was in some way connected with the turmoil in her mind had
complete possession of her.

Mlle Devaux found it hard not to fidget. Whatever position she took was
uncomfortable; she was troubled periodically by twinges of rheumatism in
her legs, and for the whole day she had been moving restlessly whenever
she sat down, the pain relieved only during those few minutes which she
had been able to snatch after lunch, in order to lie down in her room.
She became increasingly nervous and anxious as the silence continued,
her mind going over the events of the past few days in a rather
haphazard way as she tried to remember whether or not she had committed
any error, or been guilty of some neglect which might account for Mlle
Tourain calling this entirely unprecedented meeting.

With a series of slow and almost imperceptible movements she managed to
arrange her right leg so that the twinges were less frequent and
transferred her eyes from the china shepherdess in pink... who appeared
to be poised on the edge of a precipice with her three sheep...
to Mlle Tourain's face. All her life she had been self-conscious
in the presence of authority but during the past two months her
uneasiness with Mlle Tourain had increased, due to the impertinence of
Vicky Morrison, who had become the focal point of all her nervousness
and dissatisfactions ever since Vicky had first noticed that Henriette
Devaux was invariably panic-stricken during Mlle Tourain's weekly
fifteen-minute inspections. Vicky had apparently then decided that it
was up to her to relieve the general tension a little and thereby help
out Mlle Devaux by drawing attention to herself. The third occasion on
which she said something funny the headmistress had glanced at her over
Doris Anderson's note-book, then at Mlle Devaux, and after that things
went much easier with the grammar teacher. She however became convinced
that Mlle Tourain despised her because she could not keep order, for she
was a rather unintelligent woman and failed to realize that the
headmistress regarded her inspections of Mlle Devaux's class as the
least dull of the lot, owing to Vicky's presence and ingenuity.

Frulein Lange was thinking of her sister in Zurich who was expecting a
baby in two months. She had written to her that morning saying that she
was crippled with sciatica; Frulein Lange did not think that was
natural, and immediately, in her first free period, she had gone down to
the Place St. Franois and bought a book on obstetrics. She had arrived
back with the book just in time for her next class, which was a small
one, consisting of Vicky, Theodora Cohen, the two Cummings-Gordon girls
from Philadelphia, and Yasha Livovna. She had set them to translating a
long poem of Heinrich Heine and then sat down on the opposite side of
the table from them, with the book on obstetrics in her lap and the
volume of Heine propped in front of her, so that they would think she
was following them, and skimmed through the entire section on symptoms.

She was staring now at the bookcases behind Mlle Tourain, wondering
whether her neglect of that class would be discovered or not, for she
also feared authority and knew that German teachers were easy to come
by. A moment later her mind returned to Maria, her sister. The book had
said something about kidney trouble, and it might be that, rather than
sciatica. There was no way of knowing. The book said that women ought to
be examined very regularly; when she, Frulein Lange had ventured to
suggest that to her brother-in-law Adolf, that Maria should at least see
a doctor once a month because she had always been rather delicate with a
poor constitution, Adolf had paid no attention to her, beyond remarking
that having babies was natural to women and that Maria should not be
babied. The book said that kidney trouble was the most... or one of
the most... dangerous of all complications; supposing then that Maria
had kidney trouble and something happened to her?

She drew in her breath suddenly and sharply, so that Mlle Dupraix and
Mlle Lemaitre on either side of her turned and stared. The French woman
averted her feverish eyes quickly, but Mlle Dupraix continued to look at
her disapprovingly. For once in her life Frulein Lange was unmoved by
her disapproval. Her hands, lying clenched in her lap, were cold and
very red as she looked down at them. Her worry was turning to panic; she
began to feel sick and looked about the room in a desperate effort to
get her mind on something else. She must control herself; she was the
German mistress at Pensionnat Les Ormes in Lausanne, and she had no
right to let herself get into such a state; she had no right to be
thinking of anything or anyone but the school and its forty-eight girls.
Yet her heart cried that she cared nothing for the school and its
forty-eight girls, she cared only for Maria.

Mlle Dupraix had been trying to make up her mind whether or not she
should clear her throat, lean forward and ask deliberately, 'Mlle
Tourain, is it possible that you are feeling ill?' In the end she
decided to allow the headmistress her small triumph, her public exercise
of authority in keeping them all waiting like this in that contemptuous
and ill-mannered way, and resuming her former position... she had
been forced to shift a little in order to look disapprovingly at the
German teacher beside her... which spoke plainly of her well-bred
self-containment, she turned her thoughts once more to Vicky. It
required almost no effort of will on her part; she saved up Vicky for
her disoccupied moments and might almost be said to have thought of her
most of the time when she was not actively engaged in something else,
ever since the girl's arrival four months before. Settling herself a
little more comfortably in her chair, she gave herself up to the fulsome
enjoyment to be derived from hating, cruelly and maliciously, someone
twenty-five years younger than herself.

Her hatred was based on two things: that the girl knew more about Mlle
Dupraix's subject, Beaux Arts, than Mlle Dupraix herself, and that no
matter what she said or did, she could never feel that she had done more
than very lightly scratch Vicky's surface, for the girl appeared to be
imperturbable. Mlle Dupraix had, however, both said and done so much,
that she suffered a certain amount of anxiety at times for fear Mlle
Tourain should find out and dismiss her out of hand. But the
headmistress could not do that, when it came right down to it, for
during that woman's first day at school, when she had come in and
discovered Mlle Tourain moving Jeanne d'Ormonde's desk from the place in
which it had stood for ten years, she, Rose Dupraix, had made her
position clear. She had said, looking down at the stout elderly woman
sitting behind the desk and purring a little from her exertions, who
returned her look with that detached and unsmiling expression which was
her outstanding characteristic, 'You realize, of course, that I have
kept house for Mlle d'Ormonde ever since she took over the school, and
have, besides that, been teaching Beaux Arts for the past eight years.
You will be able to understand that although I am, of course, anxious to
do everything I can to assist you, I find it impossible to look upon you
as anything but my... nominal... head. I have worked for Mlle
d'Ormonde for so long that she has come to be my... my spiritual
principal. I know you will understand what I am trying to say....'

That shabby, fat, ill-dressed woman had remained looking up at her for a
long time, nodding slowly, and then remarked at last, 'Tell me, Mlle
Dupraix, what is this Beaux Arts which you teach? Or should I say what
are these Beaux Arts....'

She often asked herself how Mlle Tourain... that brown lump of a
woman... could possibly be related to Jeanne, who was so refined in
every way. At any rate, the headmistress could not dismiss her, because
she was employed by Mlle d'Ormonde, who assured her of that fact every
time she made her monthly journey across the lake to Evian to take her
flowers. Mlle Dupraix saw to it that Mlle d'Ormonde was regularly posted
on the happenings in her beloved school, and it had been _her_ opinion
that Vicky should be got rid of... although she had added that since
her cousin Amlie had charge of the school during her temporary
confinement in the hospital at Evian, it was her affair, to be dealt
with as she thought fit.

Mlle Dupraix was almost startled when the headmistress's voice at last
broke into her thoughts. Mlle Tourain was sitting back in her chair now,
and had begun to tap the rubber end of her pencil against the brass
ink-pot. The intermittent and irregular sound was an invariable
accompaniment to her speech when she was in doubt or more than usually
perplexed. The four teachers, seated in front of her, came to attention.
Mary Ellerton hesitated a moment, then returned to her chair nearest the
window and sat down with one leg crossed over the other, her arm along
the back.

She was wearing a dark brown tweed skirt and a bright green sweater
which increased her natural vividness. Her hair was the shade of reddish
gold which Amlie Tourain had always imagined existed only in the minds
of second-rate novelists; when Miss Ellerton had come to see her about
the job that first day, she had actually hesitated to engage her. She
was altogether too striking. She would never fit into the background of
Pensionnat Les Ormes. Yet something about the girl... a kind of quiet
strength which suggested to the headmistress that at some time she had
undergone a good deal of suffering... had attracted her so strongly
that she had taken her on, dismissing the question which had been
occupying the minds of the rest of her staff ever since, as to why such
a creature should choose to go out in all weathers to give instruction
in hockey, basket-ball, skating, ski-ing and tennis in exchange for
twenty-five Swiss francs a month, board, lodging and the privilege of
speaking French... which she could speak fairly well already... as
being none of her business. The others continued to watch Miss Ellerton
running up and down stairs, going at all her work with interest, almost
as though she found the school entertaining, and supposed that she had
an independent income since nothing else could conceivably account for
that look of inner happiness, that look of separateness, as though she
had an existence of her own quite apart from the school... even while
attending a staff-meeting.

Mlle Tourain said, 'I called this meeting with the intention of asking
your advice. I wanted to take these few minutes to tell you some of the
things which are troubling me, so that you could think about them
between now and this evening's meeting and possibly offer some
suggestions then.'

Her mind was racing ahead of her speech; she was aware of her audience
and at the same time aware of herself, looking at Amlie Tourain quite
impersonally.

Her whole point of view had been, until very recently, that of a person
looking through a window at something which is taking place in the room
beyond. She had remained mentally... which was the only way which
really counted... in her study, issuing from it to meals, to general
assembly each morning after breakfast, for her rounds of inspection and
the two hours which she was forced to spend each evening with the girls
in their living-room, but she had neither given one word of advice nor
performed one action with the idea that she would be there to see that
the thing was carried out. Since the doctors in Evian had said until
very recently that it would be merely a matter of months before Jeanne
could resume her position, she had simply sat and waited for four years.

The change had come imperceptibly; she could not have said when it was
that she first faced the possibility of being saddled with the school
for the rest of her life. Lately she had been drawn more and more from
her mental retreat; there had been sporadic outbursts which had shown
her the emotional pitch of the school so clearly that, try as she might,
she could no longer avoid facing a few issues. She had heard,
involuntarily... for she would have given a great deal for her old
serene and comfortable ignorance... snatches of conversation hastily
switched from German, English, Italian, Spanish into French as she went
along the halls: someone was stealing, and Truda Meyer for quite obvious
reasons... her father owned steel mills in Essen and was ardently
Fascist... had started the rumour that Ilse Brning from Saarbrcken
was the thief. Ilse's mother was Jewish, Ilse was engaged to a Jew, and
Ilse was too easily terrified. One does not expect forty-eight girls of
every conceivable nationality and from every conceivable sort of
background to be able to adapt themselves to living together in perfect
harmony, under the best circumstances. When those circumstances appeared
to be the worst imaginable, short of actual war between their countries,
schoolgirl quarrels took on significance, pretexts were readily
available, and adolescent imaginations started to work.

She tried to get some of these ideas across to her staff, seated in
front of her. She was remembering, as she spoke, that the results of the
little talk she had given the school the preceding Saturday night on the
League of Nations, had not been all that she had hoped for. They had
listened to her politely, all those children, agreeing with her in
principle no doubt, but all having the idea... this also she had
gathered from chance conversations as they went about the school...
that the function of the League was to bring every other country into
line with their own.

She had spoken with an undercurrent of passion running through her
words, as she was speaking now. She believed intensely in the integrity
and value of her country, although during her fifty-eight years of life
she had come to the bitter knowledge that the rest of the world thought
merely of a Switzerland which was divided into three parts, possessed no
national language and no national identity of its own, and was
distinguished for nothing but the manufacture of watches, cheese, lace,
chocolate, and its winter sports. People seemed to know of the Swiss
schools, but to think of them chiefly as a convenient way in which to
familiarize their children with ski-ing and skating. She realized that
culturally and economically the Swiss were relatively unimportant;
educationally... which was the only way in which they could hope to
contribute toward human advancement in general... they were
attempting too much, for it was beyond the range of possibility that
conventional, non-thinking adolescents could be made over in one year or
even three. So far as she could see, the only thing which could be done
would be to abandon the idea of finishing schools altogether, and
attempt to get foreign students at twelve or thirteen, and equip them
for any university in their respective countries which they might wish
to attend, taking five years to do it. In that way the schools might
complement the League idea.

The existing Swiss schools were in a curious position since, so far as
the parents of their pupils were concerned, their chief function was to
provide instruction in French and winter sports; the international idea
was purely incidental. Yet, she supposed, they must have some vague idea
of giving their children a chance to see through the eyes of other
countries, or they would send them elsewhere. If you have a 'my country
right or wrong' point of view, surely you don't send your children to a
school where they will be forced to speak French, share rooms with a
Norwegian or a Pole, and eat their meals with Armenians, Hungarians,
Greeks, Danes, Germans?

'We are in a peculiar position,' she concluded. 'No one else in the
world has our opportunity to... to... inculcate the international
idea in minds which are not yet too set, too limited by prejudice, too
mired in conventional patriotism, if you care to look at it in that
light. However, although that ought to be our working basis, our actual
_raison d'tre_, we cannot attempt to remedy a situation as bad as the
present one, through such a circuitous route.'

'What situation?' asked Rose Dupraix.

Mlle Tourain leaned forward with one elbow on her desk, looking at her
with a faintly amused expression. 'I should have thought that after your
twenty years in this school, you would have been the first to detect
psychological changes, Mlle Dupraix.' She looked down at her pencil,
still tapping impatiently on the brass ink-pot, and went on a moment
later, 'I put it to you like this... if the atmosphere of this school
continues to be as strained, as unpleasant, as it is at the moment, we
shall lose our pupils... and our means of livelihood. It's hard
enough combining an American Jewess of Theodora Cohen's temperament with
a hysterical fourteenth-century Fascist like Truda Meyer, without
throwing in a peace-loving and devout Bavarian Catholic like Anna von
Landenburg, a half-Jewish girl from the Saar who doesn't yet know what
nationality she is, and adding a Swiss and English staff who are too
detached to consider these girls as anything but so many troublesome
children learning lessons in the schoolroom of a mountain village.'

She thought, looking from one to another, that none of these women
would have been here had it not been necessary for them to earn their
living... no one, that is, but Mary Ellerton. Miss Williams took her
remark in the spirit in which it was offered, and instantly looked
apologetic; Frulein Lange did not appear even to have heard her...
what _was_ the matter with the woman?... Mlle Lemaitre's black eyes
said 'Fair enough' but the headmistress was afraid that that was as
far as she would go. Mlle Devaux was all ears and eyes as usual, but
the headmistress had a shrewd suspicion that the grammar teacher had
misunderstood her completely. Mlle Dupraix's chinless face... she was
the only one of the Swiss women who was free of obligations and could
afford to buy good clothes... was merely bored; Mary Ellerton smiled
appreciatively.

'Somehow or other, we've got to smooth things over...' She stopped,
asking herself impatiently what good that would do. Somehow the school
had to be brought back to its normal atmosphere; as it was now, the
girls were all divided into their five or six cliques and when they went
outside them there was immediate trouble. If this sort of thing was to
continue, they might just as well stay home, thought Amlie Tourain. She
had no desire to waste her time as headmistress of a school giving
instruction in French, winter sports and deportment; someone else could
certainly do that job equally well, if not better, and leave her free to
return to her own work. The international aspect was the only one which
appealed to her, and for the past few days she had had an uncomfortable
suspicion that Jeanne had chosen her, uprooted her from her study in the
house off Avenue Ruchonnet, for precisely that reason.

The task before her was taking hold of one corner of her mind, pulling
on it gently, so that her history had begun to slide away from her. She
was alarmed for a fleeting moment, not in the least attracted by the
prospect of spending the rest of her life in Pensionnat Les Ormes, then
once more her mind reverted to the immediate problem. What was a normal
atmosphere? Even supposing there was such a thing, would it be good
enough in these times? And how could it possibly be restored without
censoring all the girls' mail and stopping all newspapers? She had
borrowed a copy of Truda Meyer's _Nationalzeitung_ and read it from
cover to cover. It had once been owned or controlled by Gring; whether
it was still or not, the propaganda which filled the issue, the urging
of people to do this and that and feel this and that was so palpably
obvious that she could not imagine a ten-year-old child reading it
without feeling that it was an insult to his intelligence. So far as the
other newspapers were concerned, they only served to increase her
profound discouragement that after so many centuries of supposed
civilization the truth should still be subject to so much distortion.

'You know that our common aim in this school is to weld together the
various nationalities. I want you to try and break down the barrier
which exists between the staff and pupils in almost all schools. You
know as well as I do that as soon as these girls stray beyond their own
particular little group, there's trouble. I have been forced to put the
two Jewish girls on different floors from some of the Germans; I have
been forced more than once to interfere in conversations which appeared
to be going to develop along... along undesirable lines. We are
failing and failing badly, yet for some reason which I am at present
completely unable to fathom, my staff refuses to recognize the gravity
of the situation.' She stopped her incessant tapping at last and glanced
from one to the other of the faces before her, poorly illuminated by the
desk light, for it was almost dusk now.

When her eyes arrived at Miss Williams's face, the Englishwoman cleared
her throat, peering uncertainly through her thick spectacles at the
headmistress, and said doubtfully, 'I am sure we will all do anything we
can, Mademoiselle, but the only thing which appears to me to be at all
feasible at the moment is to carry on our dining-room arrangements away
from meals... group the girls with as many different people as
possible, and then have one of us with them. And surveillance of that
sort would be rather trying for them.'

'Yes,' said Mary Ellerton from down the line. 'You can't stand guard
over girls of nineteen and twenty.' She remembered Vicky's remark that
the only place she could secure any privacy was in the toilet, and even
there one was liable to be disturbed by Mlle Dupraix, who had lately
taken to coming and rapping on the door if one were not to be found in
one's room. She went on deliberately, leaning forward with her elbow on
one knee so that she could see her audience on the right. 'Some of the
girls haven't sufficient privacy as it is.' Her eyes reached Mlle
Dupraix's face and remained fixed there. 'It would be better to pay more
attention to the trouble-makers, and less to girls like Anna, and Ilse,
Marian, Consuelo, Vicky and Rosalie....'

'Really, Miss Ellerton, considering the fact that Rosalie has not been
out of her bed these past two months, I hardly think she need be
included.' It was Mlle Dupraix and she was about to express herself
further when Mlle Lemaitre interrupted with an impatient and irritable
glance at the Beaux Arts teacher across Frulein Lange's unhappy face.

The Frenchwoman could not forgive Mlle Dupraix her lack of knowledge of
her own subject, and her persecution of Vicky. 'Let us leave, for a
moment, the question of keeping an eye on the unfortunate Vicky... I
feel sure you were coming to that, Mlle Dupraix... for I should like
to know what is to become of that poor little Rosalie?'

The headmistress sighed, and relaxing against the back of her chair for
a moment said patiently, 'No one appears to know where Madame Garcenot
is. She simply set the child on our doorstep as it were, telling us that
she was rather delicate. To do the woman justice, I do not think that
she had any idea that Rosalie had a heart condition. She has been in a
convent since she was five or six, and from what little I know of such
places, I think it unlikely that she ever had a thorough cardiac
examination before she came to us. Dr. Laurent is not worried about her,
although he considers it vitally important that the child should not be
upset nor in any way troubled.' She met Miss Ellerton's green eyes and,
shaking her head slightly, looked beyond her at the blank expanse of
folding doors. The green eyes were warning her... or that was the
feeling she had... that the less said about Rosalie the better. She
went on rapidly a moment later, 'I would suggest, as a first step, that
the teachers discontinue their present practice of seeing the girls only
at specified times.'

She stopped again, as though anticipating some objection, then went on
in silence. 'You are all, to a certain extent, in their position. You,
Miss Williams... your heart is in England.' The Englishwoman flushed,
but continued to look straight at her. 'You, Mlle Dupraix, are not just
in your dealings with the girls.'

'I beg your pardon, Mlle Tourain!' she said angrily, half-rising from
her chair.

The headmistress ignored her, and said to her staff in general, 'I am
taking the risk of offending you because this situation is so serious.
You, Frulein Lange... you are... preoccupied...' Her voice
trailed away as she looked at the German teacher's thin, troubled face,
and she continued gently after a moment, 'I realize, of course, that at
times it is impossible to be otherwise.' She made an apologetic and
old-fashioned little bow which was returned by the German teacher. 'You,
Mlle Devaux, are too concerned with grammar. I wish you would try to be
a little more understanding, a little less rigid. Discipline is not
everything.' Mlle Devaux looked as though she might cry, and the
headmistress hastily shifted her gaze to Mlle Lemaitre's thin face with
its flushed cheeks and hawklike nose. 'It is a characteristic of the
French to concentrate upon brains, to the detriment of bodies...' she
began, with the complete change in manner with which she always
addressed Mlle Lemaitre, for whose brilliant, though too-early exhausted
mind she had a wholesome respect.

'I find it difficult to reconcile myself to anything less than the most
thorough work possible,' said Mlle Lemaitre, cutting short the
headmistress's tactful preamble. She pushed back a loose strand of black
hair and shoved her glasses a little farther up her nose. It was a
characteristic gesture which had delighted hundreds of girls. She was a
small, thin dark woman with an extremely nervous manner as though she
were constantly over-stimulated, and small black eyes which darted here
and there like a bird's, and were unnaturally bright.

'So do I,' said Mlle Tourain, looking down at her pencil again, 'but you
and I... in fact all of us... must remind ourselves that this is
only a finishing school, although our curriculum is a great deal heavier
than in most such places.' She raised her eyes again and looked straight
at each member of her staff in turn. 'So far as I myself am concerned, I
have neglected my duty more seriously than any of you. That also must be
remedied. When Mlle d'Ormonde comes back I should like her to find the
school in the state in which she left it, if that is possible,
considering the changes which have taken place in the world since then.'

'And I, Mlle Tourain?' asked Mary Ellerton.

'You have not been here long enough.' She looked at the English girl in
silence for a moment, then went on quickly, with a change of expression
and a slight movement in her chair, which suggested that she was
throwing off some idea which had intruded itself. 'I do not feel that
you... really believe... you are here. Sometimes I think that I
should not be at all surprised to wake up one morning and find that you
had gone... exactly as you came...' She leaned forward, without
offering any explanation for her extraordinary remark and as usual not
looking to see the effect of it, and began to address her audience
again. 'Some people think that a school is a deadly and unnatural place
for women. I have erred in the opposite direction; I have unconsciously
tried to preserve my own life in the face of constant interruptions and
distractions, resenting this place because it drew me into the world...
rather than away from it, as most people seem to think any school does.'

She seemed to be speaking to herself; with one last anxious look at the
faces before her, she turned her eyes once more to the folding doors
behind them and continued as though she were unaware of them, her low
voice flowing in the stillness of the room, 'This is a microcosm; what
we face here, the world faces; what we suffer, thousands of others
suffer in the same way. Yet only we... the school-teachers and the
parents of the world... we, and we alone are granted the opportunity
to work changes in the lives of other people, before change of any
fundamental sort becomes impossible. I am not, of course, including that
part of human experience which lies within the province of the Church.
You think of this school as an isolated place in which there is no real
_living_, as we understand the word.... The incidents of the day,
when they vary from the incidents of every other day, are an intrusion,
and often strike a false, hysterical note. We feel that monotony must be
restored at any cost.' She glanced at them once more, and with her eyes
on the brass ink-pot again, she said, 'I am trying to make you see that
what we are up against here is not exceptional, is not merely an
undesirable... manifestation of adolescent instability... but life
itself.' And after another brief silence, 'That is all,
Mesdemoiselles....'

She looked up and watched them prepare to leave, bothered by a feeling
of guilt which had crept into her half-way through her speech. She had
put into words something which she herself only half apprehended; she
had spoken the words as the ideas occurred to her, and had given the
impression that she had been thinking about them for some time past.
That was not honest. In actual fact, she as yet only partly conceived
the truth in her remarks, and she needed time in which to think them
out. These women before her were bored, bored. She was in a totally
different position, since all along she had disliked and resented the
very liveliness and activity of the school, had been irritated by the
incessant interruptions and petty detail which constantly broke into her
mind and scattered her thoughts. Whereas her staff seemed to regard the
general tension, the flare-ups, the emotional currents, as melodramatic
and exaggerated, she herself had an uncomfortable suspicion that they
were a part of life, and as such significant. Unfortunately, however,
she did not want life; she only wanted peace of mind.

Mlle Dupraix and Mary Ellerton had remained behind. The English girl
closed the door behind the others and returned to her place beside the
french windows, evidently wishing to see the headmistress alone. Mlle
Dupraix stood in front of the desk, one hand straightening her very
smart leather belt. She said deliberately, 'Vicky's been smoking.'

Miss Ellerton swung round and looked at her angrily. Before Mlle Tourain
had a chance to speak, she said, 'I'm afraid you're mistaken. Vicky does
not smoke. She... she doesn't know how. I happen to know that.' Her
head was thrown back a little and she stood rather stiffly, almost
defiantly, as though she half-expected a fight and rather hoped that
there would be one.

'Then possibly you can explain how it was she brought in a new package
of cigarettes yesterday, after she'd been out shopping with you?' The
Beaux Arts teacher was facing Mary now, leaving the still, heavy figure
of the headmistress in the background behind the big desk.

'How did you come to know that Vicky had them?' asked Mlle Tourain
curiously. She liked her position, just out of the light. She was able
to watch what went on in front of her without being drawn into it, as it
were, leaning forward on her arms and looking from the vivid girl by the
window to Mlle Dupraix in front of her. Her indifference to the Beaux
Arts teacher had not yet reached the stage of active dislike; she
considered her such mediocre human material that she simply could not be
bothered with her at the moment, that was all. Jeanne, who was
surprisingly wise in most of her dealings with people, had certainly
shown poor judgment where Mlle Dupraix was concerned. Amlie Tourain
thought she knew how that had happened, for her cousin believed, with
Ruskin, that those who think human nature high will usually find it even
higher than they thought it. It was that essential part of her which had
made her such an outstanding principal, but it had also made her
incapable of seeing the few worthless people who came into her life in
their true light. Either Jeanne had led Mlle Dupraix to believe, or the
Beaux Arts teacher had come to believe on her own, that she would be the
next head of Pensionnat Les Ormes. Amlie Tourain was able to appreciate
her feelings when she herself had arrived instead.

'I was here when Vicky came for Rosalie's mail. She opened her handbag
to take out a handkerchief and I saw them.' She switched her gaze back
to the headmistress again, anxious to eliminate the undependable Miss
Ellerton.

'Your eyesight is too good when it comes to Vicky,' said Mary, and
pulling back the curtain, looked out over the town again. A few lights
sparkled here and there on the hill-side across the lake, and the
atmosphere was heavy and grey. There would be snow during the night or
the next day, she thought.

Mlle Tourain started to speak, and thought better of it. She was
interested to discover that almost everyone suffered by comparison with
Miss Ellerton, appearing lifeless, or rather only partly animated, and
rather unfinished, as though they were still in the early stages of
evolution. It was not only that her face and body were so finely moulded
that she seemed civilized, while they appeared almost cloddish, but she
had a spark of vitality, a lightness, which diminished those about her
so that no one but that strange Canadian girl, Vicky Morrison, could
retain their identity beside her. The headmistress shook her head
slightly, trying to rid her mind of Vicky's pale, disciplined face,
knowing only too well that the rest of her staff were allowing
themselves to become preoccupied with her to such an extent that the
school was beginning to consist of forty-seven girls and Vicky Morrison.
They met her on a level, and endowed her with a quite disproportionate
importance by always showing their awareness of her, and by constant
reference to her. The rest of the school formed a hazy background
against which that girl seemed to move with extraordinary clearness.
Mlle Tourain herself had felt that same impulse to look at Vicky when
she was addressing the whole school, and if she could not prevent the
others from making fools of themselves, at least she still retained some
remnants of control over herself. The problem of Vicky, thought the
headmistress uncomfortably, was further complicated by the fact that she
was Mary Ellerton's best friend.

She wished, suddenly, that she were nearer Mary Ellerton's age herself,
that there was not the gulf of thirty-three years' experience between
them. She would have liked to see more of Miss Ellerton, for she had
retained the idea which had flashed into her mind before she began to
speak, that they were two people with, each of them, sufficient fire,
vitality, enthusiasm... however you want to put it... to work well
together. With the others, all the work, all the enthusiasm would have
to come from her, for they were too limited by years of routine, of
doing no more than they had to do, of keeping as much back as they could
and still do their work efficiently. If someone would only act with her
she might be able to follow up some of the various ideas which had been
pouring into her mind during the past half-hour. She had the sensation,
as she sat behind her desk just out of the light, of being in the hands
of a sculptor intent on remodelling her; she was conscious of change, of
being pushed and pulled by some force within her which was at war with
all her preconceived, all her lifelong desires. It was a painful
process.

Mlle Dupraix was talking in a stream of words to Mary Ellerton. The
headmistress shook her head slightly, trying to clear it a little, and
looked from one to the other in an effort to bring her mind back to the
present.

'... and since no one seems to be aware of that girl's subtle
Bolshevism, no one but me, _I_ have to do the disciplining which should
normally fall to half a dozen people. I assure you it is only for that
reason.... I, apparently, am the only one who sees through her. You
must remember that I have been dealing with girls for twenty years, and
it is naturally easier for me to detect her... her...'

'...subtle Bolshevism,' said Mary, looking bored. She came back to
the desk and picked up a pencil, fingering it absently. With her eyes on
it she said, 'I'm afraid that I can't find anything wrong with Vicky.
The only trouble with her is that she's too mature.'

'Mlle Ellerton!' said the Beaux Arts teacher in genuine astonishment.

The headmistress was both startled and annoyed. She sat up and stared
across the desk at Miss Ellerton's pencil for a moment, then looked up
at her. 'How do you explain the cigarettes then?' she demanded.

'I left her at the chemist's while I went to pick up some things I'd
ordered at a shop in Rue du Bourg.' She looked up, from one to the
other, then down again. 'I must confess that I don't quite see what Mlle
Dupraix is getting at. Vicky may bring cigarettes by the dozen into the
school, provided she doesn't smoke them here. I presume that you have
not _seen_ Vicky smoking them here, Mlle Dupraix? And that since you
have scarcely left Vicky undisturbed for so much as an hour until
midnight or later during the past month, that if she had smoked them you
would have found it out for yourself.'

Mlle Dupraix decided to ignore her. Looking across the desk at the
headmistress, she said, 'You will, of course, go into this...'

Miss Ellerton cut in quickly, 'It's not my business, Mlle Tourain, but I
imagine Vicky brought those in for someone else. Everyone knows she
doesn't smoke. If she's questioned about this, she'll certainly take the
blame on herself and the whole school will realize it. That's bad for
discipline. We don't want to make foo... to put ourselves into an
awkward position...'

'An awkward position, Miss Ellerton...' said Mlle Dupraix
meditatively, and looked once more at the headmistress. 'We can hardly
allow Vicky...'

'Yes, Mlle Dupraix,' said the headmistress wearily. The whole petty
incident had got on her nerves; she would have preferred to let the
matter drop, but Mlle Dupraix was evidently not going to allow it. It
was essential to keep the Beaux Arts teacher in her place, or she would
go rushing over to Evian and retail everything mercilessly to poor
Jeanne, who was in no state to be informed that her school was going to
rack and ruin through the negligence of Amlie Tourain. She sighed, then
went on rather irritably, 'I am surprised that you did not immediately
deal with Vicky yourself, Mlle Dupraix, knowing how... er...
conscientious you are....'

'It was scarcely my concern...'

'That has not restrained you in the past,' said Mary coldly. She looked
straight at the headmistress and went on deliberately, 'Mlle Tourain,
you know that I have only been here a little more than two months. There
are some things which I am still not quite clear about. Is the staff
permitted to enter the girls' rooms, at any hour of the day or night,
without knocking? Are they supposed to limit the amount of time which a
girl may spend in the lavatory, and after a period of a minute or so,
rap on the door and order them to come out?'

'They are not,' said Mlle Tourain grimly.

'Thank you,' said Mary, and returned to her place by the window.

The headmistress was regarding Mlle Dupraix unfavourably. The Beaux Arts
teacher returned the look for a moment, then went on with a rising
inflexion, 'Smoking is not all she does. She reads by candlelight every
night. Last night she was not reading French either...'

'What _was_ she reading?' asked Mlle Tourain, half-hoping that Vicky had
been reading one of her volumes of Euripides in the original Greek. The
idea of forcing Mlle Dupraix to admit that Vicky's nocturnal tastes ran
to Greek drama appealed to her.

'Fogazzaro,' said Mlle Dupraix. 'A most unsuitable novel, _Daniele
Cortis_....'

'I'm afraid I must disagree with you. I don't think we need feel
concerned with Vicky's choice of novels. It's a long time since I read
_Daniele Cortis_, but I should think that no one... not even you,
Mlle Dupraix... could find anything in the least undesirable in that
book. Both the heroine and hero always struck me as being considerably
more virtuous than was consistent with my experience of people. As for
her reading by candlelight, I never can bring myself to feel that that
is very reprehensible. Perhaps it is because I myself read by
candlelight for many years... I remember,' she went on reminiscently,
'that I kept a copy of _Anna Karenina_ under my cabinet de toilette for
some months...' A half-suppressed chuckle from Mary Ellerton who was
still looking out of the window brought her back to normal. She said,
with a return to her old unsmiling dignity, 'I presume you took the book
away from her?'

'No.' And in answer to the headmistress's look of surprise she went on
in exasperation, 'How could I? You know that she and Theodora are
studying Italian with Signora Bellini... and she gave her the book...
or told her to buy it... it's the same thing. What I want to know
is, however, how long you intend to allow that girl to be excused
to play her piano, owing to bad eyesight, when she ought to be
downstairs sewing with the other girls every night after dinner, if her
eyesight is good enough to permit her to read by candlelight?' Her voice
had risen in anger, and she continued with exaggerated emphasis, 'That
girl is being treated as a special being. One would think she were a...
a... well, what made her come here in the first place? How long
is she going to stay? Who _is_ she, when it comes right down to it? Do
anyone of us know anything about her?'

'You'd better answer that, Miss Ellerton,' said Mlle Tourain wearily.

'I don't know,' she said, turning so that she was facing them. 'Vicky
never talks about herself or her background. I know nothing whatever
about her family. I know she was brought up in Toronto, but whether her
parents were or are Canadian, whether they're living or dead... I
don't know. If you will forgive my saying so, Mlle Dupraix, I do not
regard it as my business, and since she's twenty-two, I do not feel that
it is _anyone's_ concern but her own. I have too much respect for her to
try and pry information out of her. Anyhow, it's not important to us...
what _is_ important to us is her uncanny knack with people...
or her understanding, if you like. She's a very good influence.'

'A good influence!' said Mlle Dupraix. 'Well!' She started toward the
door. 'I'm afraid you're due for disillusionment, Miss Ellerton,' she
said, and went out.

Mary sank into one of the big leather chairs by the desk, rubbing her
forehead with one hand, as she waited for the headmistress to speak.

'You have a headache, Miss Ellerton,' said Mlle Tourain with concern.

'A little... not very much,' she answered, looking up.

'I'm glad you stayed behind. I wanted to talk to you about Rosalie...
to ask if you know anything at all about her which might possibly help
me to understand her a little better.'

Mary shook her head, looking over the corner of the big desk at the
elderly woman seated behind it. 'I don't know any more for a fact than
you do... I _feel_ a great many things, but that's not a great deal
of help.'

She looked at Miss Ellerton swiftly, then down at her hands folded on
the green blotting-paper in front of her. 'One can't help feeling a
great many things. But it's not enough, as you say. Does anyone know
anything about her? Has she any intimate friends?'

'There's only Vicky,' she said rather unwillingly.

'Vicky! Is Vicky running this school? She obsesses my staff, she...
really, Miss Ellerton, this is too much altogether. The girl apparently
concerns herself with everyone and everything.' She shrugged impatiently
and, rubbing her hands together, decided to question the girl about
those cigarettes at dinner. The publicity might have a good effect on
her.

Mary sat up, with one hand on either arm of her chair, and said
decisively, 'No, she's the least interfering person here. Everyone talks
to her, that's the trouble. Don't blame her for it, it's not her fault.
I don't know what it is,' she went on meditatively, looking down at the
floor as though she were thinking out loud and were anxious to find the
answer for her own sake. 'There's something in her... a certain
quality which people are drawn to. With a different upbringing and a
different environment, she might have been a religieuse. There's
something more besides.' She paused, as though choosing her words very
carefully. 'She has the gift of self-dismissal... so that people are
not afraid to talk to her, knowing that she won't... I can't explain.
They're simply not self-conscious with her, that's all.'

The headmistress was looking at her rather awkwardly. 'Well,' she said
at last, 'I won't argue with you about that. I suppose I'll have to see
if she can help me with Rosalie. Something's got to be done about her...
we can't leave her lying there alone in her room without having any
real contact with her much longer. But I've got to have something to
go on.' And as Mary said nothing she went on with growing annoyance,
'It's really too much to have to ask that girl about one of my own
pupils....'

Mary said awkwardly, 'I'm afraid Vicky can't help you....'

'You mean she won't,' said the headmistress sharply.

'Won't then.'

'Why? Why?' she demanded impatiently. 'Yes, yes, I know all about the
Anglo-Saxon objection to telling tales... others have it besides the
saintly English. It isn't a question of that. I simply want to
_understand_... I want to know why that little girl lies there all
day and all night with a face like death, telling her beads, never
smiling. Although I had never thought a child of that age could suffer
mental agony, the last time I was up there in her room, I believed that
she _was_. I came away with the conviction that whatever it was that was
going on in that girl's mind, it's beyond my comprehension. I am
perfectly powerless to help her, because I don't understand. There is
something there, in that girl's mind, which is slowly taking her away
from life... I don't mean at all that I think she is mentally
unbalanced... it's not mysticism, because it's too personal...
it's rather a kind of spiritual resignation, a letting go of her vital
forces which is extremely alarming, and yet, as you say, it is something
that one feels rather than knows, and I will admit frankly that I would
not say this to anyone but you for fear of being charged with...
hysterical... exaggeration.'

She pulled herself up a moment later, as Mary said nothing, and went on,
'This doesn't seem to me to be the time for Vicky to take things into
her own hands'.

Miss Ellerton stood up. 'I'd help if I possibly could, but I'm
afraid...'

'You mean that you yourself don't feel like trying to influence Vicky,'
she said shrewdly.

Mary started to say something, then checked herself. She found that
clear, dispassionate gaze rather trying. She moved a little, then said
rather uneasily, 'I realize that it sounds absurd. But I do believe
Vicky knows what she's doing. I couldn't bring myself to go beyond a
certain point in trying to influence her, because, quite honestly, she
knows people instinctively much better than I do.'

'She seems to have you all hypnotized. One half of the staff blame
everything that ever happens upon her; the other half regard her as a
species of saint. All this Vicky, Vicky, Vicky, is becoming farcical.
Whether she intrudes herself, or whether, as you seem to believe, there
is something about her which engrosses other people to such an extent
that they force her to a place of undue prominence, I cannot have such
an... an incubus... in a school which is run for the majority, not
for the individual.' She spoke jerkily, because half-way through her
speech she had suddenly recollected that the only opportunity she
herself had had to talk to Vicky had been during the early autumn when
the Canadian girl sat at the head table. During those weeks the
headmistress had liked her because she had _not_ intruded herself.

'This is too absurd. How am I going to run this school if I don't know
what half my girls are thinking about? None of my staff know anything
about them either. Do you know?' she asked abruptly.

'No,' said Mary almost inaudibly.

'I shall find out what's the matter with that child if I have to
cross-examine Vicky for three hours. I will _not_ be put in a position
of inferiority and ignorance by this... this... species of saint
from Canada....' She stopped, looking suddenly embarrassed, and sank
back a little in her chair. She was making a most undignified exhibition
of herself, but if you are wandering about in a room full of furniture,
blindfolded, how on earth can you be dignified?

She shrugged again, then went on, utterly unaware that Mary was baffled
and rather charmed by this sudden revelation of Amlie Tourain as a
human being of fine, rich texture, 'We all run away from the idea that
there is anything in the mind of an ordinary adolescent which is not
straightforward and infantile. We only go so far as to allow them
emotions such as love for their parents and friends, sports, a certain
very limited amount of intellectual acumen and a conventional outlook...
when they suddenly show us something which doesn't fit into our
conceptions of the normal, wholesome schoolgirl, we say, 'Let us stamp
it out, at whatever cost.' It's a question of inconvenience to
ourselves, of having to deal with individuals rather than with types,
which is altogether too much trouble, and requires too much time and
effort to understand... for anyone to whom teaching is a simple
method of earning a somewhat inadequate income, rather than a genuine
vocation. I wonder why it is that this most important of all professions
should be riddled with people who do it because other hopes have failed?
Not through a knowledge of others, or a knowledge of themselves, nor
from a desire to lead, to inspire, to teach something of the way in
which life should be lived.'

And a moment later, 'There is, of course, something back of Truda
Meyer's determination to dominate above all else; there is something
behind this series of headaches which have kept Marian Comstock in bed
for more than a week. And what about Anna von Landenburg? She is
enduring something... she _is_ something besides a gentle, devout,
sweet-faced young Bavarian girl... and Rosalie. She is the greatest
problem of all. I agree with you, as you know, that there is something
besides her bad heart... a great deal besides her bad heart, but what
can a girl of that age know of life, or of suffering? She's been brought
up in a convent! You would think that life would be as uncomplicated by
doubts and fears for that girl as for anyone on earth. How can a
sixteen-year-old endure... whatever it is which she is undeniably
enduring? I don't know. I'm living to see the total collapse of all my
theories... it seems that one's theories remain intact only so long
as one generalizes from ignorance, and avoids particularizing from
knowledge.'

Mary was astonished. She sat down on the arm of her chair and watched
the face opposite her which had come alive during the past few minutes,
half-perceiving at last that this woman was quite remarkable, that she
possessed a mind which was not only objectively analytical, but
subjectively analytical as well, and which was tempered by sufficient
emotion to make her understanding almost unlimited once she was willing
to rely on her intuition as well as on her intellect. Until this moment
she had considered her brilliant, but humanly speaking, unimaginative.
She had thought that Amlie Tourain might be of some use if she would
only exert herself, but that even then her sphere of usefulness would be
limited by her too-theoretical and academic experience of life.

With a swift, nervous glance at her, Amlie Tourain continued anxiously,
'I have everyone's tendency to judge others by myself. When _I_ was
sixteen, I was a bookish, heavy creature... if I had my dreams, I
never knew it'. She paused for one moment, looking upwards, her face
tense, then apparently shook off some idea which had no connection with
the present and went on, 'There may have been something more than that.
Nowadays one is harassed by doctors and psychologists haranguing us
about the unconscious mind. One doesn't know where one's at. There's no
reasonable, logical answer to the argument that such and such is true of
you, even though you have not been aware of it. You see... until now,
I have always believed that everything, including human beings, was
susceptible to pure reason.' One of her rare smiles flashed across her
face. 'I can't help feeling that these girls are all unnatural. I was
never like that... I'm not making the conventional, adult excuse
either. I was _not_ like that! A psychologist might say that I was, and
have never realized it... but it's the same thing, because my basis
for understanding at the moment is what I can remember of my own actual
experience... not some psychical fact of which I am unaware. So I
have the normal tendency to try to force them into being like myself...
to translate them, in other words, into terms I can understand...
since one cannot apprehend truth only with the intellect...
there is a spiritual and emotional apprehension as well. One's no good
without the other. I have to be able to feel, vicariously, what they are
feeling, and to do that I need a little knowledge of them... I can't
go on pure guesswork, any more than I can go on pure reason. And of
course the problem is made all the harder by the fact that I know so
well that if environment and suggestion count for anything at all, these
girls cannot possibly be the kind of girls who were produced in
Switzerland in 1890.'

She seemed to fall into thought then, allowing her mind to run backwards
in one of her rare moments of mental relaxation. Mary made no effort to
bring her back, but continued to sit opposite her in the dim, quiet
study until the tea-bell rang with a sharp, discordant clanging. From
then on their conversation was carried on against the noise of
whispering, talking, shuffling, and clattering as forty girls rushed
past the door to the dining-room.

'These girls... these extraordinary girls...' said Amlie Tourain,
bringing herself back to the troubled atmosphere of January 1935. 'I
mean Vicky, Rosalie, poor little Ilse looking forward to Jewish
persecution if Hitler gets the Saar on Sunday... Yasha... Anna...'
She dropped her hands wearily into her lap; she was wondering at
the outgrowth of that bookish, heavy girl, and the woman whom she saw
sitting in the book-filled study of the little house off Avenue
Ruchonnet, a scholarly serene woman who was most strangely herself. Was
it possible that the way to true living lay not through the rejection of
human desires, trouble, pain and joy? Was it possible that she had lived
for fifty-eight years in a world rendered sterile because there, in her
little house down the hill-side, there had been no ebb and flow of
life... only the slow passage of time, only so many days, weeks, months
and years which now, as she looked back, melted into one another, an
unbroken continuity.

She could go on in compromise no longer; that much she knew now, and no
more. She had yet to be convinced that this way, through Pensionnat Les
Ormes, lay her road, not the other life of contemplation and study.

She was wrenched back once more by Mary's voice asking: 'Is it necessary
to hold the faculty meeting to-night?'

'I'm afraid it is. We've got to get to the bottom of this stealing...
we can't allow it to go on any longer.'

'It was because of that,' said Mary with difficulty, 'that I asked about
it. I don't think Ilse and Truda should be left alone any more than is
absolutely necessary. I don't know whether you know or not, but Truda
thought she discovered Ilse copying during a test on Monday, and that
gave her the idea that Ilse was the thief. Besides that... you know
how naturally uncongenial they are. Ilse's too mild and gentle...
Jewish cowardice and weakness, Truda calls it, inherited from Ilse's
Jewish mother... and Truda, as you said, likes to bully.' She stood
up, glancing at her watch. 'I could ask Vicky to stay in the living-room
this evening to keep an eye on things,' she added tentatively.

'Certainly not,' replied Mlle Tourain, with a return to her old manner.
'Vicky's always gone upstairs after dinner to work at her piano... I
couldn't have her suddenly appear in the living-room without everyone
knowing that she'd been instructed to "keep an eye on things". And I
couldn't have that. She's only one of forty-eight girls to me, whatever
she is to the rest of you.'




CHAPTER II


Mary had intended to have her tea as quickly as possible and then hunt
up Vicky, but on leaving Mlle Tourain's study she remembered that her
skis were still lying in the snow down by the rink at the end of the
garden, which necessitated a trip upstairs to get her coat and then a
rapid walk down to the gates.

There she met the Bonne Femme, an ancient Swiss peasant woman who
established herself each afternoon in the cellar-room beneath the floor
of the east loggia with peanuts, chocolates, grapes, apples, dates, figs
and other delicacies which she sold to the girls at exorbitant prices.
She was trudging down the drive with her bag strapped to her shoulders.
She stopped and peered uncertainly, then said, 'Ah, it's you, Mlle
Ellerton'. She came close to the young English girl and stared at her,
reaching up very slowly to her shoulder where the pack was pressing on
it, trying to loosen the strap with one hand. 'It gets heavy,' she
remarked, half to herself.

'Can I help you?' Mary asked. She was anxious to get back to the house,
for the dreary cold wind which blows down from the Alps before a
blizzard penetrated her clothes and made her ears ache. How did the old
woman manage to stay warm?

'No... no... I know how it goes...' She struggled for another
minute, then relaxed with a sigh and continued to stand staring at
her... or through her, Mary thought, for the old woman's mind was
wandering again, as it did occasionally.

'You're late to-day, Madame,' she said, looking upwards to the school
where the lights beckoned her across the wide, snow-covered sloping
terraces. The lights seemed to say 'Here is life, if you would only come
here to live', so distinctly that she was troubled, and had an impulse
to run through the heavy gates into the outer world. Only half her being
existed in the school; the other part seemed to vibrate just out of her
reach beyond its windows. It was that other part which must be kept
alive; she felt that so intensely that she never crossed the threshold
of the school without consciously leaving something of herself behind as
if to preserve the link between Miss Ellerton as she was now, and the
Miss Ellerton... or Mrs. Gilchrist... she had been.

The Bonne Femme was giving her confused and disjointed explanations of
her tardiness that afternoon. Normally she packed up and left shortly
after two. Forcing herself to follow what the old woman was saying, Mary
gathered that she had had to wait until Marthe, Mlle Tourin's elderly
personal maid, had come off duty. Marthe, it seemed, was a distant
cousin of the Bonne Femme who had once been attached to her son Henri,
now a boatman with two barges of his own at Ouchy. Henri had recently
fallen in love with a young girl, less than half his age, and proposed
to set up an establishment of his own and send his mother back to the
mountains. She suspected that the girl's father had some idea of
personal advancement by sanctioning the match. In any case, it was all
highly improper and she had waited this afternoon to consult Marthe
about it, for she had always thought that Marthe regretted the quarrel
between herself and Henri... but now Marthe, who was approaching
fifty, would not do anything about it. Could Mlle Ellerton suggest some
way out of it? It was not that she minded going back to the mountains,
for she had half a mind to die where she had been born, but the girl
herself was pitiable... Antoinette, her name was, and she was in love
with a waiter at the German caf... it was wrong, all wrong, an
offence against the Holy Virgin, although her son, surrounded as he was
by godless Protestants, had become indifferent to his religion and
neither she nor Father Antoine could do anything with him.

Mary shook her head. She was caught in one of those inexplicable moods
which come suddenly and go as quickly, when one seems to be a harmonious
part of the universe. She was aware of herself, talking to an old Swiss
peasant woman about her son, standing by the gate of a school above
Lausanne with the world and all its thrilling possibilities stretching
out beneath her feet.

The old woman gave her a final, baffling look, turned and marched
abruptly away toward the gates muttering to herself something about
Vicky which Mary could not catch. She ran after her, caught her arm and
said brusquely, 'What was that you said about Mlle Vicky?'

'I have forgotten.'

She looked at her quite helplessly, knowing that it was more than
possible that the Bonne Femme really had forgotten, and there was no use
in pressing her. She let go her arm, half-turned, then said on an
impulse, 'Tell me, Madame... you are clairvoyante, yes?'

'A little, sometimes.'

'What will happen to Mlle Vicky?'

'Oh...' with a shrug, 'she will go. Why not? She should never have
come... with her will go Mlle Thodore....'

'And I, Madame?'

'Oh... you. You will stay.'

For some reason she believed the maundering old woman, and watched her
until she had turned the corner by the gates and disappeared into the
street, almost bent double under her sack of delicacies, then started
back towards the school, carrying her skis over her shoulder. The next
day, she knew, the old Bonne Femme would be back in her dark cellar
behind the improvised table laden with fruit and nuts, having forgotten
all about it. She would be, once more, a white-haired, plump old woman
with a neat lace cap on her head and a clean pinafore tied round her
waist, sitting on an upturned box with her hands folded in her lap,
bearing no resemblance to the sinister figure bent under the knapsack
who had just disappeared down Avenue Closse. Her prophesying meant
nothing. Mary was sufficiently clear-headed to realize that you cannot
make a person believe anything unless that person has already had a
conscious or unconscious vision of the same thing; you have no
conviction of truth unless you have already apprehended it intuitively.
The old woman might have said, 'You will go to live in Bangkok', and she
would merely have smiled.

Mary went doggedly on up the drive, unable to recover that single
instant of mental poise. She looked about her at the trees on either
side, then up into the dark sky. The school was ahead to the right now,
for she had taken the turn where the drive left the south fence and
started the long straight climb on the west side of the grounds. Between
her and the lighted french windows whose shutters had not yet been
closed for the night, a few elm trees cast their vague soft shadows
across the snow, silhouetted against the lighted building. She wanted to
take a long walk up the hill-side beyond the school and sit down by
herself where she could look out over the town and reorientate herself
with the world, but there was not time, with all the things she had to
do before dinner, and besides that one could not sit and think with the
temperature down to zero.

Would this interminable winter never end? Each cold day since her
arrival seemed to stretch downwards and backwards into the past, never
merging with the day which preceded it, or the day which followed it but
remaining separate, like a flight of steps up which she had dragged
herself in almost unbearable loneliness.

The early months following her discovery that her husband was unfaithful
to her and that the woman was one of her best friends, had melted into
one another now, and seemed a long period of greyness and misery. She
could not have said when it was that the days began to stand out
individually, to become units of so many hours which must be got through
somehow or other until night fell and reality slipped away, leaving her
free to lie in bed and plan her future with Barry, her husband, as she
wanted it to be.

That morning she had learned from Jack Emerson, who had shared Barry's
apartment with him until he left Lausanne, that he... her husband...
would not be back from Sicily until spring. Standing by the
telephone in the linen-room... there was another in Mlle Tourain's
study, but one could not be sure that Mlle Dupraix would not drop in
there, whereas the linen-room could be locked from the inside...
surrounded by sheets, pillow-cases, napkins and tablecloths fresh from
the laundry stacked in piles all around her, she had felt sick with
nervousness when she dialled the number. She had tried a hundred times
during the past two months to summon sufficient courage to call him; the
knowledge that she might meet him in the street had made every trip to
town a mad adventure and she had walked about Lausanne weak in the
knees, as a woman does who goes to meet her lover. It takes courage, she
thought, to gamble all you've been able to salvage of yourself after
months of suffering, to risk the death of this new, enriched person, who
has somehow in spite of immense loss, emerged from the ashes of the old.
That explained why she had tried a hundred times, and why she had often
found herself thinking that if she did come across him looking in a shop
window or posting a letter, she would turn into the first doorway and
let him pass without speaking to him.

When she had telephoned that morning and asked for Barry, Jack Emerson
had not recognized her voice. He had merely said that Mr. Gilchrist had
gone to Taormina to paint, and would not be back until spring. It seemed
odd to her that he had not remembered her, until she realized that the
only reason _his_ voice and his whole personality were so impressed on
her was that when one suffers an intense shock one's perceptions become
over-acute, and her memory was playing her the unhappy trick of
retaining every sight and sound of that evening when she had first come
to know that Barry was unfaithful to her. He had said the night before
that he intended to go down to Devon to spend the week-end with his
family, and she had believed him. Why not? She herself never lied, and
when you don't lie yourself, you do not expect lies from others. Anyhow,
she remembered... how well she remembered... that she had been
standing at the bar with her young cousin, who had come down from Oxford
demanding that she go out dancing with him... and she had looked up
to see Barry and Ethel, one of her best friends, reflected in the mirror
in front of her. Something in the way they were looking at each other
instantly recalled to her mind something in the way they had looked at
each other when Ethel had been down in the country visiting herself and
Barry the preceding summer, and the truth broke in her mind, sending
long, sharp splinters into every corner of it.

Well, put up a partition between yourself and your memories if you
cannot by any effort of will rid yourself of them. Who had invented
telephones? Half the shocks of her life had come to her by telephone;
she could look back to the person she had been and see her standing by a
whole series of telephones listening, while an impersonal mechanized
voice at the other end of the wire knocked away the foundations of her
world. There was that girl who was herself at seventeen, standing in a
wide hallway listening to a voice from Croydon reporting that her
father's plane had been found floating in the Channel, and four years
later that same girl trying frantically to get the office of the track
at Brooklands where Stephen Ellerton, her brother, was trying to break
some record or other. She was twenty-one then, and was phoning from the
Gilchrist family place on the cliffs above the Bristol Channel, spending
the week-end with them to mark her twenty-first birthday and her
engagement to Barry.

In another sense, the most sickening conversation she had ever had with
anyone had come at the end of that long, hellish afternoon during which
she and Barry had talked and talked, during which he had explained,
describing his emotions about Ethel beautifully and assuring her, Mary
his wife, that this was not just an affair, but that he wanted to marry
her best friend. Just as the door closed behind him, Ethel herself
called her on the phone. She said she hoped that they could still be
friends; that she knew it would all work out in the best way for the
three of them, and that Mary would realize after a while that her
marriage to Barry had been a mistake from her, Mary's point of view.
After all, they were modern, civilized people and there was no need for
all this out-moded bad feeling which previous generations had seen fit
to indulge in under similar circumstances.

Well, they had not married each other after all. A decree _nisi_ takes
too long to become absolute for such easy lovers to stave off boredom.
In the end he had wanted to come back to her. Mary had said that they
would wait a year. If at the end of that time he still wanted her, if he
wanted her enough to be faithful to her in the meantime, she would see
him then. This also by telephone, and in some ways it was the most
difficult moment of her life, for the very sound of his voice pulled her
to pieces, so that with the few fragments of herself which she could
summon to her aid in such a moment, she had had to make that
overwhelming decision. The rest of her clamoured 'Come back! Come back!'
so that the aching desire for him might be appeased if only for a while,
leaving the future... who cares about the future if only I can see
you and touch you again?... to take care of itself.

The year would be up in April. Soon after that last time when he had
telephoned to ask if he might come back, he had gone to Lausanne. It was
his sister Betty, a sympathetic soul, who had suggested to Mary that if
she simply couldn't stand London without Barry, she might try for this
job at Pensionnat Les Ormes, which another friend of Betty's had
recently vacated, leaving Mlle Tourain without a games mistress, so that
she could at least be near him.

Which all sounded very level-headed and self-controlled, she thought,
coming round the corner of the school into the courtyard, but the
trouble was that she had to force herself to live up to this conception
of herself. If she had been able to talk to Barry this morning... if
he had not departed for Sicily... the year would have been up then,
so far as she was concerned. It was as though her intelligence
superimposed on her outward existence a course of action which had
nothing to do with the actual life she led within herself. By day she
was able to think clearly and sanely, but at night when she was alone
she lay in bed terrified for fear something should happen... for fear
she should discover that Ethel had had a successor and he had not kept
his word for the second time... and she be left without the hope
which had, once more, in spite of herself, become the core of her being.
She had taken no particular pains to build up the first Mary Ellerton,
but the second, the person she was now, had been put together slowly and
with labour, and the whole welded by suffering.

She put her skis on the rack by the door, and stripping off her coat
crossed the hall and entered the dining-room. It was Thursday, she
remembered, the day on which Pensionnat Les Ormes got fresh bread, which
accounted for the mob in the dining-room. By Saturday it would have
started to thin out, by Wednesday ninety per cent of the school, not
being particularly fond of bread six days old, would take tea in their
rooms, the meal consisting of fruit, nuts and candy bought from the
Bonne Femme. She shook off her mood as she closed the dining-room door
behind her and choosing the most congenial group of girls, went over to
Frulein Lange's table. The German teacher was not there; she was
sitting in the art room on the third floor listening to Vicky playing
the Italian Concerto.

The dining-room had windows along the south and west sides. The north
wall, which separated it from the kitchens and which was on your right
as you walked in, was bare, but for a long table covered with clean,
thick white dishes and a sideboard in which the bread and silver were
kept in drawers. The west wall directly opposite the door had three
casement windows and three tables placed at right angles to it, Mlle
Tourain's, the head table, Mlle Devaux's, and Mlle Lemaitre's in the
corner. Between the two french windows on the south side was Miss
Williams' table, in the left-hand corner Frulein Lange's table, and
next to it, on the east wall, Mary Ellerton's own table, which, she saw
on entering, was occupied by eight German girls, none of whom she
particularly liked.

At Frulein Lange's table where she sat down, with her back to the wall
so that she could see the whole room, were Yasha Livovna from Warsaw;
the two Armenians Aime and Natalia Babaian; Stephania Carr from Milan
and Maria-Teresa Tucci from Genoa; and at the end, the only two German
girls who were _not_ at her own table, Mary noticed... Anna von
Landenburg from Nrnberg, and Ilse Brning, the little half-Jewish girl
from Saarbrcken, both of them very obviously choosing neutral ground.
Ilse would naturally want to get as far away from Truda Meyer... who
was sitting at the head of the next table with her seven sycophants...
as possible, but why Anna, Mary wondered.

There were no other members of the staff present; either they had
already had their tea or they were not coming at all, for it was
already close to four-thirty. Tea was the only meal which was an
entirely voluntary affair; one might take it or not as one saw fit, and
sit where one liked. Mary was always amused to notice how different the
grouping... for which Mlle Dupraix in her capacity of housekeeper was at
other times responsible... was in the afternoon. Then nationalities, and
congenial nationalities, sat together. The rest of the time they were
all mixed up.

The table in front of her was littered with tea-cups and plates, as well
as the inevitable heavy china pitcher containing milky tea, a dish of
jam, a plate of butter, and three large stacks of fresh French bread.
She was served by Yasha beside her as soon as she sat down. Yasha, she
noticed, was in a silent mood... a mood which might have been
described as morose if she had had a less enigmatic countenance. She sat
and sipped her tea with the cup held in both hands, and her elbows on
the table. She was a small, dark-skinned Polish girl with fair hair and
brown eyes which were naturally shadowed. She was slender and voluptuous
at the same time, passionate, generous, and about as pliable, Mary knew,
as a piece of granite. She was extremely reserved, preferred not to draw
attention to herself in any way, and was beginning her third year at
Pensionnat Les Ormes, having been sent back unexpectedly during the
early part of December.

Mary said, rather awkwardly, 'You don't look as though you're very
pleased to be back, Yasha'.

She gave a barely perceptible shrug, turned her head and looked
speculatively at Mary for a moment, then returned to her tea, saying
rather coldly, 'My mother decided suddenly to go to Stamboul for
Christmas. It's a waste of time for me to be here, since I already speak
French and German better than I speak Polish, but she _would_ go to
Stamboul, and there was no place else to put me.'

'And your father?' asked Mary.

'My father? He spends most of his time in Vilna anyhow,' she answered
with an obvious shrug, this time.

'You might learn English,' suggested Mary rather lamely.

'I already speak English,' said Yasha, in English, without a trace of
accent. Then in French again, 'I had an English governess'. It was
unlike her, Mary knew, to give an explanation for anything, so she might
take that as a compliment.

The eight Germans at the next table were talking rather loudly in their
own language. Mary ignored it for a while, then turned at last and said
peremptorily, 'Speak French, please'.

She wished that she had Yasha's command of languages; it was obvious
that what Truda and her friends were saying in German was bothering Ilse
and Anna at the end of the table on Yasha's left, but she could not
understand it.

Ilse, a thin dark girl with unusually fine brown eyes and an unhealthy
pallor, said at last, as though in answer to Mary's unspoken question,
'They're talking about the Saar, Mlle Ellerton'.

'Everybody is, Ilse,' said Mary quickly.

Anna glanced across at the games mistress, past Ilse, buttering a slice
of bread, and Yasha, sitting back in her chair and looking straight in
front of her. She was white, except for a spot of colour burning over
each high cheek-bone, and her hair was dark, a cloudy frame for her face
which already showed unusual character and the traces of unusual
suffering for a girl of only nineteen. She was slender and rather tall,
unlike little Ilse beside her, with greyish green eyes which appeared
flat, dried as they were by fever and fatigue. She had a bad touch of
flu but she was doing her best to keep those in authority from finding
out about it for fear they would send her to bed. Her mind revolved
around her father (who was head of the Bavarian group of
counter-revolutionaries), escaping only now and then into work. If she
were sent to bed and forced to stay there for perhaps a week, she would
have nothing to prevent her constant fear for his safety and his life
from closing in on her. She had been fighting to prevent that, ever
since her arrival four months before, as the number of arrests,
persecutions and death sentences increased each day.

She said, in her quiet low voice, 'Germany will get the Saar', as though
there were no more grounds for doubt than if she had said that there was
snow on the ground outside the dining-room windows.

'You can't be sure of that, Anna,' said Mary. 'No one can, until after
the elections.' It was hard to talk to some of these girls now, she
found; most of the time when she tried to be cheerful she felt that what
she said was irrelevant and that she was taking them for children, which
they were not.

The Bavarian girl shook her head. 'Germany will get the Saar, Miss
Ellerton,' she repeated almost mechanically.

Ilse looked so upset that Mary, remembering her Jewish mother and Jewish
fianc, was alarmed, watching the little Saarlander bite her lip,
struggling to control herself. Anna glanced at her with an unhappy
expression, and the two fell into silence again, sitting side by side
and somehow withdrawn from the group.

Maria-Teresa remarked from the other end of the table, 'This bread is
meraviglioso! Every night I dream of bread from Saturday on... the
stale bread gives me indigestion, Mlle Ellerton... but it's never so
good as this.' Beside her, Stephania smiled at the table in general, as
though asking for leniency in the case of Maria-Teresa Tucci.

Natalia and Mary began to discuss ski-ing at Gstaad where the school was
to spend its annual fortnight in the middle of January. Mary had never
been there, and listened to the heavy-featured Armenian girl's
description of it with some interest. She liked Natalia, having
recovered from her first instinctive antipathy to the girl's broad dark
face and thick coarse hair; to her full, soft contralto voice and
too-affectionate manner, when she discovered that Natalia was one of
those rare people who see only good in others, who are kind, considerate
and self-forgetful. She took the younger girls under her wing, was
always knitting, sewing or darning for someone else, and could be
depended upon to recognize incipient quarrels before it was too late.
She also possessed, astonishingly enough, a remarkably clear, logical
and well-balanced mind.

Her cousin Aime, very similar to her in appearance but mentally and
physically smaller, had never been heard by anyone to utter more than
'Oui' or 'Non' although Natalia became distressed periodically and
assured Mlle Tourain that she really spoke beautiful French en famille.
Because she was always silent, no one knew anything about her. Both
girls had been born in Smyrna, but after the persecutions the two
brothers had fled with their families, Natalia's father to Brussels
where he grew rich from the tobacco trade, Aime's father to Paris where
he proceeded to grow equally rich in the Oriental rug business.

'Where's Vicky?' asked Mary of Natalia at the close of her anecdotes of
the year before at Gstaad.

It was Yasha who answered her. 'She's in the art room with Frulein
Lange, or was when I came down.' A moment later she added, with unusual
irritation. 'Something's up with Frulein, so she goes running to Vicky
like everyone else. C'est trop fort!'

Which might, thought Mary, mean anything. She was worried about Vicky,
but unable to get at the cause of her worry. Perhaps it was the Bonne
Femme working on her nerves, which were, like everyone else's at the
moment, in a rather uncertain condition. There were a hundred small
things which, totalled up, meant trouble for Vicky, but you cannot send
for a girl and say that there is this thing and that thing which have
been reported to me and which, taken together, lead me to believe that
we would get along better without your presence in this school. You have
to have some specific, grave charge to lay against a girl before you can
expel her.

She began to be aware of fitful giggling and spasms of half-smothered
laughter at the next table, but a quick glance at the eight German girls
told her nothing. Something was in the air, though; she could tell that
by looking at Ilse and Anna who were watching Truda and the others and
looked ill at ease. Mary's anxiety for them in that heaven-sent period
after dinner when Truda could pick a fight undisturbed if she chose, was
gradually increasing to such a point that she almost decided to go
against Mlle Tourain's orders and tell Vicky to stay down and keep an
eye on things.

If the headmistress believed that Vicky was deliberately taking it upon
herself to influence the other girls, or that she was preening herself
on her inside knowledge, the headmistress was mistaken. Mary knew that
from her own experience, for it was only when she tried to get something
out of her about Rosalie, or what was worrying Anna, that Vicky closed
up like a clam and refused to talk. Once she had said almost violently,
'I came here in order to live quietly by myself. I've had too much
melodrama, too much excitement, and I wanted for once to be able to fade
into a background; I wanted to live my own inner life as it seems to me
only possible to live it when your external life is governed and
simplified by a general routine. I wanted to be freed from all
responsibility for my own or anyone else's existence. Now look at the
mess I've made of it!'

Mary had asked Vicky about Ilse, because of all the girls in the school
she seemed to be in the least happy circumstances. Her father, a lawyer
in Saarbrcken, had been ill for a year, during which Ilse's fianc, a
young Parisian Jew, had taken care of his business and supported his
family. Three months from now, two months from now, two weeks, one week,
six days, five days, three days... and Ilse's country would decide
whether or not they should throw in their lot with Hitler and his
cohorts. That was what Ilse had been living with, and Mary did not know
how she had stood it. Supposing Germany got the Saar, Paul would not
have much of a chance, for in the intervals when he was not conducting
Brning's law business or playing with Ilse whom he apparently adored,
he was acting as some kind of officer in the
remain-under-the-mandate-of-the-League-of-Nations party. So Ilse had his
actual safety to worry about as well as Truda's unpleasantness. And
there was Ida Samuels from New York and the other sensation-minded
adolescents talking pogroms, Jewish persecutions in Essen, Munich,
Heidelberg... Jews or part-Jews were not allowed on the
Wilhelmstrasse, they rode in the corner of the Berlin trams with their
faces hidden, skulked along the gutters living on garbage and what
charity the poverty-stricken German public could give them... How on
earth did little Ilse endure it, with Truda openly sneering at her
approaching marriage to a Jew, and half the school retailing stories of
the latest atrocities in her hearing? And now, into the bargain, she was
supposed to be a thief, according to Truda and half a dozen others.

Yet Vicky had said, 'I think she'll be all right. Bad as it is, at least
they're all in it together... her father and mother, and Paul.
Incidentally, he must be a very decent sort. He used to be in his
father's firm in Paris... it's quite an important one, evidently...
until he elected to salvage the Brning's business. Anyhow, you
can stick almost anything if you're not alone... as Anna is.'

'Hasn't she got a father?' Mary had asked. 'It seems to me that I've
heard Graf von Landenburg mentioned... he's her father, isn't he?'

'Yes,' Vicky had said shortly. 'That's the trouble.'

Mary had been completely nonplussed. 'But what's the mystery then,
Vick?'

'You'll probably find out, sooner or later. I promised her to keep it
under my hat. The trouble is, she's as near to being mad with worry as
anyone I've ever seen.'

Remembering that, Mary turned once more and scrutinized the immobile,
feverish face of the Bavarian girl, still sitting beside Ilse and now,
like the little Saarlander, studiously ignoring the eight giggling girls
at the next table. What on earth was it all about, Mary wondered. Truda
and her friends obviously had something up their sleeves, but what could
they possibly do in the dining-room? Some of the girls had already
drifted away and it was emptying fast; still, it was no place for a
quarrel. She shrugged, and decided to wait until the last of them were
out of the room. If nothing had happened by that time, then it was
merely her own... and Ilse's and Anna's... imagination at work
again.

Maria-Teresa Tucci at the other end with her back to the German girls at
the next table, shivered and said, 'Dio mio! I ask myself each morning,
"Maria-Teresa Tucci, shall you ever be warm again?" It's no wonder the
Swiss have no music, no love and no art; all their energies must be
spent in maintaining life. They are so busy trying to keep on existing
that they have no time to live.'

'Who told you the Swiss have no love?' demanded Yasha.

'Theodora. She said that the government offers prizes to induce people
to marry, and once married it is the custom for the women to grow
enormously fat, and the men to grow beards, smoke large pipes, and put
their feet on the mantelpiece.  vero?' she asked, looking acutely
distressed.

Yasha threw back her head and laughed, while both Mary and Natalia
smiled appreciatively. Maria-Teresa was very interested in all questions
concerning love; she was engaged to an officer in the Bersaglieri, but
she had asked every teacher and every girl individually not to mention
it please, for her parents thought her too young (she was fifteen).

This fact, according to Vicky, who suffered more from Maria-Teresa's
attachment to the officer in the Bersaglieri than anyone, should be
suppressed, for she was forced to live next door to Maria-Teresa who
passed all her spare time playing the piano in her room with one finger
and shouting:

'Sul cappello, sul cappello, che portia-ah-ah-Ah-AH-mo...'

She had tried closing the door and stopping her ears, but while the 'sul
cappello' part was then lost, she still heard the merciless pounding of
Maria-Teresa's finger and then the 'ah-Ah-AH-mo' suddenly cleave the
air, which was more upsetting than having to listen to the whole
sentence and working up to it gradually. In desperation she bought
Maria-Teresa the song and implored her to learn the rest of it, 'per
l'amor di Dio, Maria-Teresa!' but so far she had not done it. She
continued to sing, in a voice like a high-pitched trombone, 'Sul
cappello, sul cappello, che portia-ah-ah-Ah-AH-mo', accompanying herself
inaccurately with the first finger of her right hand.

Vicky had given up, for a few days. Then, being occupied with the almost
impossible task for a person with an unmathematical brain, of trying to
teach herself counterpoint, with Maria-Teresa's lusty regimental song
shattering the silence at unexpected intervals, she marched into her
room one afternoon and demanded:

'For the love of heaven, Maria-Teresa, _what_ do the Bersaglieri wear on
their hats?' trusting that the little Italian would refer to the music
she had bought her, and trying to inveigle her into learning the rest of
it that way. But Maria-Teresa darted across the room to her
dressing-table and scrutinized the photograph of her beloved which had
been taken with his own and several other regiments, and was so small
and indistinct that 'Only the eye of a great love could possibly
distinguish between him and the three thousand other gentlemen present',
said Vicky admiringly.

After looking at it closely for some time, Maria-Teresa raised her head
at last and said dreamily, 'I don't know. I think it is a cock-feather'.

Vicky gave up, remarking bitterly to Mary, 'I was always led to believe
that when Italians fell in love they suddenly acquired enough musical
ability to make up for what they lost in the way of humour!'

A week later she and Theodora wandered into Maria-Teresa's room one
afternoon and found her sitting on the floor... her habitual position
when reading a letter... staring moodily in front of her.

'What's the matter?' asked Vicky in alarm, for Maria-Teresa's usual
expression was one of joy mixed with happy anticipation; the entire
staff went in constant suspicion of her motives and intentions owing to
that look.

'Cosa c'?' she repeated tragically. 'Enough to upset anyone, no matter
how _stolide_! She scrambled to her feet and shoved the letter into
Vicky's hand pointing to the lines which read, 'I am not the
thirty-second from the left in the tenth row as you seem to think...
those, my dear Maria-Teresa, are _privates_. That man, which you seem to
have believed is me, is a private in the 7th. I am the sixteenth from
the right in the third row, with the _officers_. I, as I thought you
knew... io sono tenente nel Secondo!'

Theodora struggled through it, then took refuge in the hall,
leaving Vicky to deal with the situation. Vicky swallowed twice
and then managed to say solemnly, 'I do not think that anyone could
be blamed, for that...'

'He thinks I wished to insult him,' she said tearfully.

'Listen, Maria-Teresa. No man could fail to appreciate the... the...
er... devotion of a girl who would count thirty-two from the right...'

'Left,' she corrected dismally.

'Left, then, and ten from the bottom, a hundred times a day...'

Maria-Teresa was an almost ludicrous contrast to Stephania Carr, the
only other Italian girl in the school and her inseparable companion.
Stephania was the daughter of an official in the government at Rome, but
lived with her mother and brother in Milan and hardly ever saw her
father. She had had a very strict upbringing, and was extremely quiet
and unobtrusive. Her mother, a worldly and rather bored woman, had
impressed Vicky as both selfish and egotistical in her relationship to
her daughter. Beyond seeing that Stephania was constantly chaperoned and
that she wore childish clothes which did not become her thick, dark skin
and mediocre face, she ignored her completely. The boy, who was nineteen
and a year older than Stephania, was constantly out, and during the ten
days which Vicky had spent in the Carrs' home at Christmas, they hardly
ever saw him. The two girls were left with six servants to amuse
themselves as best they could in the huge marble, velvet-hung rooms of
the Carrs' apartment, to look through the grilled windows at the people
passing in the street below, most of the day. The place was like a
mausoleum where Stephania lived her life of quiet hopelessness, saying
nothing about herself except once, during a long afternoon when she had
remarked that she was in love with a second cousin who lived in Ferrara
and whom she never saw except during the few weeks he spent with the
Carrs in their villa near Stresa each summer.

They were sitting on one of the window-seats in the drawing-room, their
voices pitched low. The only sounds which reached the quiet room came
from the streets which seemed very far away: motor horns, the clanging
of tram bells, the intermittent cries of street vendors selling fruit
and flowers, and the deep bells of the cathedral, tolling vespers. Vicky
sat with her head against the window-frame, avoiding Stephania's eyes,
while the girl talked, hesitatingly at first and then with increased
feeling, to the only human being who had ever been interested in what
she had to say about herself. There had been only that one sign of
confidence and trust; the remainder of their days together were spent in
mental isolation, and only her infallible instinct told her that
Stephania was glad she had come, and that she was sorry to see her go.

Maria-Teresa was devoted to her, although she frequently expressed to
Vicky her exasperation at Stephania's lack of spirit, remarking one
afternoon, 'She simply sits and waits for things to happen to her. She
waits for her family to marry her off to a man she does not love. She
looks ahead and all there is in sight is a marriage with no love but
with many children, and after a long time, death'. She was sitting
cross-legged on Vicky's bed peeling an orange, while Vicky lay stretched
out on the floor writing a two-part invention, or what she hoped might
turn out to resemble a two-part invention, with luck. 'What sort of life
is that?' demanded Maria-Teresa.

'I said, what sort of life is that?' she repeated, throwing a piece of
peel at Vicky's head to attract her attention.

Vicky looked up and said politely, 'I never know whether you're more of
a nuisance here with your incessant chatter, or more of one in your room
with your incessant "sul cappello". Which do you think, dormouse?'

'It's up to you,' she said deferentially. 'I was asking what sort of
life that is?'

'Whose?'

'Stephania's,' she answered, with remarkable patience.

'Oh! One no doubt behaves according to one's nature,' said Vicky
sententiously. 'Probably Stephania will be as happy that way as any
other. You see, Tessa, she was brought up to accept things... so she
accepts them. It's not in her nature to go against a social system. If
it were, she'd probably be happy just revolting, even if she didn't get
anywhere. I think most people act in their own best interests in the
long run, whether they appear to be doing it for themselves, or for the
sake of humanity. Some gifted individuals manage to do both. They're the
actively good people of the world. The passively good ones, like
Stephania, merely do nothing in their own interests, which works out for
the good of the race in the end. Some do neither, like me.'

'What _do_ you do?' asked Maria-Teresa with interest, spitting seeds
into the waste-basket below her on the floor.

'I haven't the slightest idea.'

Maria-Teresa was puzzled. She fidgeted for a while, watching Vicky lying
lazily on the floor with her dark head on one arm, her eyes half-closed
as she looked sideways at the note-book beside her. 'Gesu Maria, but
you're beautiful,' she said at last. 'It's not fair. There's Mlle
Lemaitre with much brains and no beauty, and me with much beauty but no
brains, and you with both so that each seems more, if you see what I
mean.'

She would say periodically of Stephania, 'She is so _good_', as if in
explanation of her devotion to her. They were always together, but when
one of the staff became suspicious and set out to investigate the night
life of the school, it was always Maria-Teresa who was caught in
Stephania's room or just leaving it, armed with cigarettes, foie gras,
and a bottle of Chianti under her dressing-gown. No one ever knew where
the Chianti came from; the bottles were too big to smuggle into the
school, but she always had one or two on hand. It was one of the most
baffling mysteries of Mlle Dupraix's life.

The girls had fallen into a desultory discussion of skating. Mary
continued to worry about Vicky, drinking cup after cup of weak tea,
half-conscious of the crowd at the next table and the invisible line
which seemed to have been drawn between them and Ilse and Anna during
the past few minutes. There was trouble of some sort brewing.

Yasha was saying, 'It's really time they found out. It's unpleasant not
to know, for you can't help doing half a dozen people the injustice of
half-suspecting them. Until we _do_ know who's been stealing, we're all
possible thieves'.

'The worst of it is that someone's getting away with it,' said Natalia,
her normally pleasant, dark face rather bad-tempered.

Yasha's uncommunicative brown eyes opened wide. 'I don't agree with
you,' she said calmly. 'At present we're all going about distrusting one
girl after another. That makes forty-eight dishonourable people. Only
_one_ girl is _really_ guilty... unless she's formed a syndicate,'
she added, with a look of faint amusement. 'It's not good for us, not
good for our minds, to be eternally speculating on such a disagreeable
subject.'

Natalia looked unconvinced, too preoccupied to think in any but a
limited way while Yasha continued to develop her point. It occurred to
Mary after a while that Ilse was becoming more and more upset at this
philosophical discussion; she began to cry a little, while Anna held one
of her hands and whispered to her in German. Mary, realized that since
neither Yasha nor Natalia liked Truda and her group of followers, it was
unlikely to occur to them that Ilse might think they were referring to
her. It was even possible that Truda's gossip about Ilse and the
stealing hadn't even reached their ears. She said quickly, 'Change the
subject, Yasha, you're bothering Ilse.'

The little Polish girl looked startled, glanced at Ilse, smiled at her
warmly, then got up and went out, followed by Natalia and Aime. The
dining-room began to empty slowly, as groups of two and three girls
drifted toward the doors and out into the hall. Mary continued to sip
her last cup of chilly tea, waiting for Ilse and Anna to leave. Their
delay became more noticeable after a while, for they had finished eating
and drinking long ago, and appeared to be merely sitting. It became
plain to her suddenly that they were waiting for the Germans to leave in
order to avoid meeting Truda and her friends in the hall, while, judging
from their expressions of poorly concealed amusement, the girls at the
next table were equally determined to sit them out. She did not know
whether Ilse and Anna were actually afraid of them or not; Ilse quite
possibly was but Anna was too isolated in her own troubled mind to be
greatly affected by anyone.

The room was gradually falling into silence as one girl after another
became aware of the game which was being played in the corner. It was
still in the half-joking stage but it would soon develop into something
different if she did not get the two factions separated. If she told
Ilse and Anna to go, the German group would immediately get up and leave
with them; if she ordered Truda and her friends to leave, it would be
putting a label on it which she was anxious not to do... perhaps
lending it a seriousness which it did not yet possess. At any rate she
would be letting everyone in the room know that she herself recognized
the trouble between Ilse and Truda which, until some action was taken by
Mlle Tourain, would give the girls the impression that the staff
sanctioned it. She was alarmed. Maria-Teresa and Stephania had gone; she
was alone now, with Ilse and Anna on her left, the German girls on her
right, sitting between them like the referee at a wrestling match, she
thought irritably. Everyone in the dining-room was watching them now.
Ilse and Anna were trying without much success to appear unconcerned,
sitting with their eyes rigidly fixed on the table, but she saw that
Ilse's lips were trembling again... she was in no state to take
teasing, that was the trouble. There was nothing which Truda could
actually do, either in the dining-room or the front hall, but Ilse was
too close to hysteria to realize that.

The silence was becoming oppressive, making itself felt as something
more than the mere absence of movement and conversation. Two of the
maids poked their heads through the swinging doors at the other end of
the room and then retreated into the kitchen again.

Mary bit her lip, mentally cursing her nerves and the state of her
brain, both of which were apparently choosing this singularly
inopportune moment to make thinking impossible. For lack of any better
solution she decided to leave herself with Ilse and Anna, letting the
school think what they liked of the staff's attitude toward the
Truda-Ilse affair, when Theodora Cohen crossed the room, late for tea as
usual, and sat down lazily with her back to the Germans.

She glanced over her shoulder at them, then said to Mary in her cool,
drawling voice, 'Truda's still hungry. Do ring for more tea for her,
Mlle Ellerton'.

The remark, spoken in Theodora's clear French, brought Truda to her feet
saying roughly, 'You shut up!'

She got up very deliberately and, turning, faced the German girl. They
were both unusually tall. 'Certainly,' she said good-humouredly. 'I know
my place... in a Nazi gutter isn't it, Truda?' She bowed with a
slight smile and, turning, sat down once more with her back to the
German girl fuming two feet behind her. She helped herself to some bread
and butter and jam, apparently unconscious of the gaping school and the
livid Truda, and remarked, 'There's going to be snow... lots of snow.
I suppose that'll mean bad ski-ing to-morrow... bad for me, anyway.
I'm trying to learn how to do a stem turn to the left. I can do it to
the right, but for some reason not the other way. Funny, isn't it? I
always thought open christies were supposed to be harder. C'est curieux,
hein?'

'Trs curieux,' agreed Miss Ellerton. 'If you'll come out to-morrow at
four I'll give you some pointers. I'd like to do some longish trips at
Gstaad. You'd better get into condition. Do you think you could do
twelve miles a day?'

'It's a cinch,' said Miss Cohen, breaking unexpectedly into English.

Mary choked, then turned and said to Truda, 'Haven't you anything to do
but stand there gaping?'

They left, followed after a short interval by Ilse and Anna. The
remaining girls crowded out; Mary and Theodora, who was placidly
consuming her bread and butter, were left alone with the two maids,
clearing away the dishes across the room.

Mary stretched and said, 'Teddy, you're a brick. I couldn't think of
anything to do but the reason for not doing it.' She looked across at
Theodora and smiled. The Jewish girl from St. Louis, Missouri, grinned
back, but said nothing. 'It's all impossible, and yet it's true. Another
week like this and we'll have half a dozen girls all screaming for their
mothers every time we say "boo" at them. Five years ago, for example, I
suppose Truda and Ilse would have gone through the entire year without
addressing more than half a dozen words to each other, but that would
have been all. I can see that they're not naturally particularly
congenial. Truda's an earnest, hard-working, humourless soul; Ilse's
tired, worried out of her wits, over-sensitive and utterly lacking in
self-confidence. Truda's all wound up in a retrogressive political
movement. Ilse's... just Ilse...'

'Half Jewish,' said Theodora matter-of-factly.

'Yes. Well, anyhow, there in 1935 you have the basis for almost any sort
of trouble. What's the matter with the world, Teddy?' she asked
unhappily.

Theodora slid down in her chair, leaving her long, beautiful legs
hanging over the arm and said peacefully, 'Don't upset yourself,
darling. Everything works out for the good of those as loves God. We'll
all murder each other in another ten days; somehow Vicky will be held
responsible for it just on general principles, and that will be that.'

'Why?' demanded Mary.

She shrugged and sighed. 'Oh, Vick's just one of those people who are a
sort of perpetual goat. They'd probably have burned her for witchcraft
in the Middle Ages... or ducked her a few times in the village pond
in an effort to make her a little more comprehensible, anyway. She'll be
kicked out of here sooner or later and then goodness knows where we'll
go...'

'Why "we"?'

'You don't think I'd let her walk out the front door alone, do you?'
asked Theodora in genuine astonishment. And as Mary shook her head, she
went on with apparent irrelevance, 'Do you know that game called "Cat's
Cradle"?'

'Yes. Why?'

'This school makes me think of it.'

'Oh,' said Mary. And as Theodora continued to eat bread and butter
without further explanation, she said, 'Come on, Teddy... elaborate.'

'I was thinking that this school, from a psychological point of view,
looks like the last grim stages of that game when your fingers are all
tangled with crossed and re-crossed lines of string. The hands belong to
our Amlia. Between her fingers are a piece of... string...
connecting Ilse and Truda; another, in a very different way, connecting
Consuelo and Marian; another Vicky and the two Andersons; another
between the Andersons and the Cummings-Gordons; another between Truda
and me; still another between Truda and... Anna...' she said with
a change of tone.

'That's what Vicky thinks,' said Mary, with a puzzled expression.
'What's back of Anna, Teddy?'

'Ask me another. It's just that I feel something. I don't know anything.
And there's a line between practically everyone and our little Ida
Samuels... between her and me, anyway... May God have mercy upon
her soul for the sake of her _dear_ parents residing in the Bronx,' she
interpolated maliciously.

Her habit of rattling along inconsequentially and then suddenly becoming
perfectly serious at the end of a sentence which had begun facetiously
was rather exhausting for anyone trying to rest in her presence, Mary
thought. She herself was startling, a series of contrasts and apparent
contradictions. Her hair was dark red with streaks of gold; half the
school maintained that it was dyed, the other half equally stubbornly
that it was not. Theodora herself, when approached, said that she
preferred to keep an open mind on the subject. Her eyebrows were plucked
down to almost nothing; she had a clear, rather dark skin which was
always liberally made up in spite of everything which Mlle Tourain could
say on the subject of cosmetics; brown eyes, a nose which was a little
too broad for any pretence to beauty, and a well-shaped, surprisingly
sweet mouth. Her clothes were all bought in Paris and were conspicuous,
though in excellent taste. Vicky had once observed, disclaiming any
originality for the remark, that Mary Ellerton's were sport clothes, and
Theodora's clothes _pour le sport_, two vastly different things.
Theodora's language was fearful, and her conduct very frequently
regrettable. She was rather bad-mannered and excessively lazy; she
smoked incessantly in her room and was quite indifferent as to whether
or not she was caught.

At the same time she was an exceptionally strong character. She had the
highest form of courage... the kind which is required to retain both
self-respect and self-control in spite of constant jibes at her racial
inferiority. She remained proud of being Jewish in the face of everyone.
She had a few loyalties which remained fixed and dominated her behaviour
at all times; she would have been quite capable of hitting anyone who
criticized Vicky. Her sense of humour never deserted her for more than a
few seconds, no matter how intensely she felt, and she had a tendency to
give away everything she owned and then spend three months' allowance
replenishing her wardrobe.

She had learned to think late, and had been trying to organize her
beliefs and her values in a rather disorderly and panic-stricken way
since her arrival at the school in the beginning of September. No one
had ever directed her thinking, and she had no knowledge of what could
be got out of life... only what could be got out of money. She had
been brought up in the wealthy Jewish section of St. Louis society, the
daughter of a railway man who died when she was twelve, leaving his
millions to herself and her brother, along with a membership of three
country clubs, two houses of extravagant size and ugliness, and one of
the best art collections in that part of the United States... all on
the somewhat eccentric condition that his twin son and daughter acquire
a knowledge of five languages before their twenty-first birthday.

She had already spent four years in Europe during which she had learnt
enough Spanish, Italian, French and German to enable her to speak them
without a trace of accent. The only language in which she had a distinct
accent was English; to the end of her life her own speech would have
'St. Louis' stamped all over it. Her brother had inherited his father's
perversity and elected to learn Rumanian, Danish, Dutch and Hungarian,
although he had abandoned the last after eight months in Budapest,
asserting that no one but a drunken lorry-driver could get his tongue
around Hungarian vowels, and demanding from his sister the loan of two
hundred dollars in order to get to Biarritz.

She was an aristocrat. Her particular friends in the school were Mary
Ellerton, Vicky, Consuelo Deane from San Paolo, Brazil, and Anna von
Landenburg; the others she ignored except when there was some occasion
for generosity. She was observant, however oblivious she might appear,
and her cat's cradle idea interested Mary.

She said again, 'But why Anna?' And a moment later, 'Where did you get
that idea? Did Vicky say anything?'

'Vicky _never_ says anything except things about art like, "It should
be apprehended half by the mind, half by the emotions, and half..."
No, that makes more than a sum total, doesn't it? Well, a third of each
then... no, I mean by all three together... the third being the soul,
whatever that is, Miss Ellerton. And on the basis of that she takes
exception to the Beethoven 6th because she says that you cannot
apprehend a duck's quacking and a rooster's crowing by a third of your
mind... No, darn it, I mean a third mentally, a third emotionally,
and a third spiritu...'

'Shut up,' said Miss Ellerton rudely.

'I was only thinking that you might like to share some of the benefits
of Vicky's wisdom,' she said, looking injured.

'That would be all right if you didn't misquote her so outrageously,'
she said unkindly. 'I don't know what Vicky said about art, but I'll
stake my soul on it's not being anything so involved as that.'

'Art is an involved subject, Miss Ellerton,' said Theodora loftily.

'I know it is. But you involve it still further, if you don't mind my
saying so.'

'O.K. Anyway, she proceeded to develop a nice logical... er...
logical...'

'Are you stuck for once?' asked Mary solicitously.

'I was merely searching for the mot juste,' she said, in the tone of one
who refuses to be disturbed by hecklers in the gallery. 'A nice...
logical... refutation of abstractionism in painting,
representationalism in music, and something or other in dancing...
anyway, she says that Mary Wigman and the like are too titanic; they
make her feel that life is _most_ terrific and filled mit strm und
drang...'

'Whew!' whistled Mary admiringly. 'And?'

'She doesn't like that sort of dancing.'

'I rather gathered that. But Anna, Teddy?'

'I don't know, I told you. But... there's something on her mind, and
what's given me the jitters is that it's something which shouldn't be
known by anyone, particularly Truda... and that Truda _does_ know it...
or guesses it. Well, we'll soon know,' she added with a shrug. And
a moment later, irrelevantly, 'She appears to like Jews... Anna, I
mean.' She contemplated the unusual spectacle of a Christian who really
liked Jews, for a few minutes, and then laughed. A moment later, with a
sudden change of expression, she said, 'How long is that bitch going to
be allowed to pick on Vicky?'

'Vicky can take care of herself,' said Mary, but instantly looked rather
concerned. 'What's she done now, Teddy?'

'She's taken away all her gramophone records. Vicky'd just got the
'Royal Water Music' from London after waiting for it for three months,
and a special recording of a Gregorian Mass which our little Dupraix
dropped on the floor outside Vicky's room. I know, because I happened
along and she told me to pick up the pieces. Vicky doesn't know that she
broke it... Dupraix isn't the type of person who'd ever own up to
anyone about anything... much less to Vicky. As for paying for it...
not a chance! But I'll get even with her,' she added, hugging one
of her knees contentedly. I'll get even with her.'

'Come on, Teddy... don't be so beastly smug about it. What are you
going to do?'

'I went shopping with Frulein Lange this morning. She was all excited
about some book or other she wanted, and she let me go down Petit Chne
alone to that record shop. I ordered another Gregorian Mass from Rome,
and when it comes I'll take it to Dupraix, and say, "I knew you'd be
worrying about this, Rose, ma petite vipre. La voici". Now isn't that
neat?'

'Teddy!'

'Good heavens, you're not going to object, are you?'

'Certainly not.'

Theodora laughed, then said coldly, 'I can stand any amount of
straightforward, honest-to-goodness rowing provided it's done in the
heat of something or other, but when it comes to an unhealthy sort of
obsession like this one of Dupraix's about Vicky, it gives me
goose-flesh. It's got a sex basis, of course. That's what makes it so
disagreeable.'

'You shouldn't say such things.'

'No? It's just my dirty American mind, Mary; think nothing of it. All
the same, this can't go on much longer. Lately she's taken to trying to
snag Vicky into talking about herself... and you know what a mug's
game _that_ is. I've tried it myself... I guess you have, too. Only
once though, eh? It's the one thing which really bothers Vicky terribly,
which is why I say that Dupraix will either have to let up or else...'

'I think it'll be "or else" Teddy. Mlle Tourain's started to wake up to
the fact that there's an awful lot going on in this school that she
doesn't know anything about. It's begun to gall her a bit. Top that with
the fact that there's someone who _does_ know... Vicky... and my
guess is that she'll be out before Easter, and there's nothing you or I
can do about it. It's Mlle Tourain's own fault for being so
astonishingly oblivious, and to make it worse she hasn't done enough
headmistressing to get the knack of it... she doesn't know how to
deal with people. She's always putting her foot in it. If she did, she'd
either put herself into the position where she knows more than Vicky, or
she'd avoid any conflict with her. But she won't. Sooner or later she'll
get her on the mat about something publicly, Vicky will close up like a
clam, and Mlle Tourain will come off worst... probably make an ass of
herself. Incidentally, this is not for public consumption... though
thank heaven I don't have to tell _you_ that.'

'No you don't,' said Theodora absently, looking straight ahead of her.

'As for Mlle Dupraix, she'll be out too, once Mlle Tourain really gets
going. The only reason she's lasted this long is that she's part of the
old rgime... incidentally, I wonder if Mlle d'Ormonde _will_ ever
come back? And what Mlle Tourain would do if she... if she died?...
However, that's neither here nor there at the moment. I think Mlle
d'Ormonde must have inherited Rose Dupraix from her aunt... the one
who gave her the ormolu clock, and the volumes on tropical fish.'

'Is that what they are?' She laughed, and shifted her position so that
one leg was crossed over the other. 'I've been trying to find out for
months, but Mlle Tourain seems a little sensitive about them. She always
whisks you away before you can have a good look. I thought maybe they
were unabridged editions of Casanova, Cellini, Rabelais, and _Lady
Chatterley's Lover_, and that Mlle Tourain read them in bed each night.
Well, well, well, tropical fish, forsooth... I suppose there's no
chance of their being false covers?'

'No,' said Mary, looking amused.

'Anyway, I'm sorry Dupraix is so firmly anchored to the school. She's a
great loss to the W.C.T.U., the Legion of Decency, and the Morality
Squad.'

They got up and started toward the door, Theodora still munching a crust
of bread and moving beside Mary with that loose, swinging walk which was
so ungraceful and at the same time one of her chief charms. She managed
to do everything wrong to such an extent that people watched her,
fascinated... dominating most of the world about her by sheer
individuality.

At the door Mary stopped, looking doubtfully across the dark hall at
Mlle Tourain coming down the main staircase. 'Do try and keep some sort
of order during that faculty meeting when no one's about to suppress
Truda or Ida to-night, will you Teddy? It's not only for Ilse's sake,
but also because if one row has a chance to get started, we'll have half
a dozen to deal with within a week.'

Theodora looked down at her and shook her head. 'I'm a lousy person to
pick,' she said. 'There are too many people here who have absorbed,
maybe without knowing it, some of this anti-Jewish feeling that's
drifting around the world now. I haven't much authority... and I
can't do anything with Truda. Of course if I just sat and let her call
me names, that would undoubtedly help her to blow off some steam and
keep her occupied for a while, but it won't do for the whole evening.
Why don't you ask Vick? She can handle anyone.'

'I can't. Mlle Tourain has her back up about her. You'll just have to do
your best, Teddy. I think she'd almost rather have a row than have to be
grateful for Vicky preventing one. She won't give her authority a badge
by letting her come down to-night.'

'Oh hell,' said Theodora. 'Us and the League of Nations... you could
see it, by the way, through a telescope... if that point of land
didn't get in the way.'




CHAPTER III


I

Anna von Landenburg sat at her desk, trying to compose a letter to her
father. It was a difficult task and grew more difficult as time went on,
for what was of vital importance to her was also of vital importance to
the censors. For the past three months she had written an average of
three letters a week without once saying anything which really mattered.

Her mind was too exhausted and her head too heavy with fever to
concentrate. Between her eyes and the sheet of notepaper in front of her
a series of strange pictures which had first come to her in her sleep
and which had lately begun to remain with her all day, kept rising up
and blinding her so that from time to time she raised her head to look
at the icon hanging on the wall above her, trying to clear her thoughts.
The crazy, horrible pictures continued to dance in front of her like an
old-fashioned film: she saw her father being flogged through the
streets: she saw the Cardinal standing before an altar praying, while a
jeering mob at the back of the cathedral shouted insults and blasphemy.

Her brother Anton, at present interned in the labour camp 'Sulzbach',
near Nrnberg, had not written to her for several weeks, nor had he
communicated with Graf von Landenburg in any way. She knew that her
father was alarmed, for he had not made one single reference to Anton in
his letters for the past two months. She had read and re-read every one,
seeking some remark which might be an indirect method of letting her
know that at least Anton was still alive. There was none.

The men interned at Sulzbach slept in wooden bunks covered with straw, a
row down each wall. The floor was stone, and most of the windows had no
glass... only strips of canvas nailed across them. The stoves shed
their heat in a restricted area; the rest of the room was cold and damp.
The Arbeitsdienstler, 'labour service men', as they were called there,
got thirty-five pfennigs a day and two hot meals, or board, lodging and
about six shillings a week in exchange for building bridges, trenches,
fortifications and roads. Those six shillings were supposed to feed,
clothe and lodge their families. Since the men were often politically
undesirable... or racially undesirable... whether or not their
families were fed, clothed or lodged adequately was of no great
importance. If they refused to go to the camps... and if they were
permitted to refuse... the unemployed got nothing, nor did their
families. They worked in columns under armed overseers; they received no
visitors, their mail was opened by the camp officials, and they could
not leave. Each year seven thousand young Germans who could not help
growing up and reaching the age of sixteen were drafted as labour
service men, landhelpers, or emergency workers, marching about the
German countryside working at anything which the government thought
needed doing. If they refused to go when they were drafted, they were
sent to a concentration camp to 'accustom themselves to discipline'.
They were separated from their families and they could not marry.

Her brother had gone to Sulzbach more than a year ago, in December of
1933. The following March her mother died. She had had a weak heart
which had not withstood her worry. Anton's lungs were none too strong;
he should have returned to Basle where the air was good and where he was
studying medicine, instead of going to Sulzbach.

Anna remembered the morning that he had received the order to report at
Sulzbach; the four of them were sitting at breakfast in the dining-room
with the table drawn close to the fire, for it was already turning cold,
and he had sat very still with the letter in his hand, while her father
determined to use what little remained of his influence to get the order
cancelled. Seemingly not even hearing what his father was saying, Anton
had stated simply, 'I shall go'. An order to a member of the aristocracy
was an unheard of thing, and Anton's imprisonment was a warning. He had
refused to allow his father to draw attention to himself, and so he had
gone, one bitter December day shortly before Christmas, and they had not
seen him since. Early in March her mother had died, one windy night, and
then there were only her father and herself left in the house in
Nrnberg. Now, there was no one. The house was shuttered up and deserted
and the von Landenburgs who had lived there, who had been gay and sad,
who had loved each other and had loved God a little more than most
people, were gone.

If Anton had become so ill that he was unfit for any kind of work, what
had they done with him? Anna knew that the Nazi point of view was based
on the survival of the fittest; if you were weak you were better dead,
for a high intelligence in a delicate body was only a nuisance. In fact
a high intelligence was a nuisance anyhow. It was unlikely that they
would bother much about a twenty year-old-boy whose father was
concerning himself with matters which were not his business.

It was actually that they, her father and herself, were leaving Anton to
die, as thousands of Catholics, Jews, Socialists and Communists were
leaving their relatives to die, without protest. If they were members of
the counter-revolutionary party; if they belonged to one of the Groups
of Five in a factory, or ran crude printing machines wherever it was
moderately safe to do so, or distributed those little pamphlets which
were left on street corners, on vacant plots and out of the way places
by one knew not whom... in any case, they said nothing, for to remain
inconspicuous was essential to their very existence.

A revolutionary movement in a thoroughly mechanized state like modern
Germany was an entirely different matter from the Russian revolution,
for example. The Ochrana could only get about on horseback for the most
part, while the Gestapo of Fascist Germany had everything from
radio-police to machine-guns. Its organization and technical efficiency
forced the counter-revolutionaries to work alone, or almost alone, and
it was not an infrequent thing for a man to learn that his brother also
belonged to a Group of Five only when the police came to arrest him.

A few days before, her father had been forced to take refuge in a
monastery outside Nrdlingen, although his whole organization lay in and
around Nrnberg, and the move alarmed her. He must be directing
operations from there. It was the same monastery which had been raided
by the police in the spring of 1934. The only incriminating evidence had
been three printing-presses, which the brothers _might_ have been using
for religious purposes, but they were still under suspicion. One of them
had been arrested and sent to a concentration camp, presumably to
'accustom himself to discipline', on general principles, which had
caused such a scandal that the others were left unmolested for the time
being.

She had had a letter from her father that afternoon which had been
carried over the border by a Dominican monk, on his way to see his
invalid mother in Zrich. It was lying open on the desk before her, but
she was sitting in the dark in order to rest her eyes while she tried to
compose an answer.

She got up at last and dragged herself across the room to switch on the
light, in order to read it again. There was still no news of Anton,
although her father could have written in safety. No news was not good
news, she thought with a wry smile... it was bad. She found herself
becoming dizzy; the flowered wall-paper was a sickly confusion of green,
blue, and pink against a glaring white background. She resisted the
temptation to open the window and try to clear her head, for the sudden
draught would probably give her more cold and more fever, and returned
to her chair by the desk again.

The icon above her on the wall had belonged to her Russian mother, and a
small lamp, suspended beneath it on a slender chain which ran from
corner to corner of the frame, lit the Madonna day and night. Anna's
prayer-book and crucifix lay on the enamel-topped table by her bed;
beyond that the room was devoid of personality, with only the regulation
basins in the alcove, as well as two beds... although Anna occupied
it alone... over one of which was thrown a dark cover, for she used
it as a couch. It was a large corner room with a full-length glass door
leading to her balcony on the south side, and a casement window looking
down toward Montreux and the valley of the Rhone to the east.

She sat at her desk reading her father's letter and shivering, in spite
of the woollen dressing-gown which she had wrapped around her on coming
up from tea. Her head was heavy with steady pain, and her eyes so dried
and blurred by fever that she blinked continuously in an effort to read
more easily. Her father had written two days before from the monastery
at Nrdlingen:

    'It is a relief to be in such a quiet atmosphere, and the
    brothers help me with my work which has been piling up at an
    oppressive rate because the Gestapo kept me on the move so much.
    Last week it had got to a point where I was changing my office
    two and three times a day and getting nothing done. At last I
    was forced to leave Nrnberg altogether and take refuge here,
    for the police have got into such a state of nerves that you
    cannot look a Nazi in the eye without being accused of having an
    expression contrary to the spirit of the Fascist corporate
    state. Our work is going forward well... of course that's the
    reason for the increasing number of Secret Police. I suppose
    after a while, everyone who isn't a counter-revolutionary will
    be a policeman... and they will persecute and arrest and
    execute harder and faster than ever in order to take the mind of
    the public off the food shortage and the housing problem. The
    _Rote Fahn_ reached four hundred thousand copies its last issue.
    It's impossible to tell how many of us there are now, but we are
    certainly getting on.

    I do not want to worry you with what I am going to say now, for
    I am merely taking the course I should take if I were a doctor
    or a lawyer or a business man. If anything happens to me you
    will have a small income... enough to get along on. I want
    you to go either to Knigsberg to stay with your aunt, or back
    to the sisters, who could certainly do with your help, for they
    are working themselves to death collecting food and clothing.
    They need you, and love you, as you know.

    Anna, my darling, I miss you very much. I don't know when I
    shall see you again. If things have not settled down by Easter
    you had better go to Knigsberg for the holidays. I cannot have
    you anywhere near me for the present. In the meantime I want you
    to be as happy as possible, and keep well. Take care of yourself
    and try not to worry. God bless you.'

She had heard of torturing and violence. The summer before, she and her
aunt had been walking in the town; her aunt had suddenly caught her arm
and pulled her into an alley, in time to prevent her from seeing some
Communists being driven through the streets of Knigsberg to a
concentration camp... but not in time to prevent her from hearing the
whistling of whips in the air, the screams and wails of women.

Someone had told her... was it Ida?... of a small village where
one of the men had flown a red flag. The Nazi Storm Troopers came and
beat up the men in full sight of their wives, mothers, sisters and
children, then loaded them into lorries and took them away. When the
Troopers returned the next day another red flag was flying, but when
they sent a small boy up to get it, they found it was only a towel,
soaked in the blood of the previous day.

That scene she could not forget; the village street lined with anguished
women and children cut straight across her mind, forming a background
against which there was the image of her father, beaten through the
streets like the Communists in East Prussia, and the Cardinal saying
mass, while the crowd behind him defiled and profaned the church. She
knew that she was drawing too close to the slender border line between
sanity and madness; she knew that no human being could stand continual
contemplation of intense suffering, and she prayed to the Madonna above
her:

'Heilige Maria, stop me thinking of these things. Give me strength and
guidance, for I am so afraid...'

2

'But I don't see,' said Elsa Michielsen of Copenhagen, 'why your
politics are any concern of mine. Government in general is, I should
think, a method of organizing a country so that its citizens are able to
live peacefully, progressively, and prosperously together. You're as
bellicose as you can be, you German Fascists; you're anything but
prosperous, and as for progression... if you'll excuse my saying so,
you seem to be travelling backwards at an incredible rate. First you
take all freedom away from your women, then you harass the Church, and
_then_, if you please, you decide that Christianity is no good and start
a movement for the worship of Wotan and Thor. Really, Truda. If you want
to be a Fascist, go ahead and be one, but let the rest of us drift along
our incompetent, racially impure way.'

'I'm not trying to make you be anything,' said Truda obstinately. 'I'm
only trying to explain.'

'You're trying to excuse, my dear, which is a different thing.' She was
sitting cross-legged on Truda's bed, sketching Truda on the chair in
front of the dressing-table and little Gretel and Lotta behind her on
the floor with their backs to the radiator. They were known respectively
as 'Little Klaus' and 'Big Klaus', because they were inseparable, and
because Gretel was so small that Lotta... in reality of only medium
height... appeared huge beside her. Over on the other bed Christina
Erichsen, the only Norwegian in the school, was curled up knitting a
pale blue sweater.

'You don't know how awful everything was before Hitler was elected,'
said Truda, in a more reasonable tone. She was able to discuss her
opinions more or less rationally with Elsa and Christina because of
their racial neutrality. At the same time, although they were two years
older than herself, she despised them slightly for having no particular
political convictions. Her Fascism was a species of religious
fanaticism; in consequence she had the traditional view of the reformer
toward those who, for one reason or another, have not yet seen the
light. Elsa and Christina rather liked her, since they were naturally
more drawn to English and German people than to any others, but they
found her incessant political talk tiresome. They considered anyone with
a desire to reform the world a meddler, and since they were surrounded
on all sides by adolescents with that particular tendency, they had few
intimates in the school.

'I have read that book, _Little Man, What Now?_' said Christina, laying
down her knitting for the moment and pushing a strand of fine blonde
hair off her forehead. She was a quiet-mannered girl of twenty, who
believed in compromise and hated arguments, yet she had her own opinions
and upheld them, as unobtrusively as possible, when she considered it
necessary for the sake of her conscience. She went on dispassionately,
'When a country is in such a hopeless state as that, perhaps anything
definite is better.'

Little Klaus said violently, 'I wish people would leave us alone. Ever
since the war we've been treated like naughty school-children. It began
with the Americans coming over and deciding to cut off East Prussia from
the rest of the country. How would they have felt if we had gone there
and handed over Chicago to Canada?' She was not very sure where Chicago
was, and looked nervously from Truda to Elsa and Christina to see if
they were laughing at her, but they were not sure where Chicago was
either, so her remark passed uncontested, much to her relief.
Contradictions always made her blush and stammer; actually never, until
she came to the school, had she felt capable of holding an opinion on
any subject. She had four brothers, three older and one younger than
herself, all of whom considered her, as a girl, mentally negligible. The
entirely novel experience of being listened to when she talked had gone
to her head a little, and she was now anxious to express opinions on
every subject. 'We don't want to interfere with other people; all we
want is justice...'

Elsa took her up on it, sketching in Truda's legs. 'People would believe
Hitler and his "leave us alone" complex a little more easily if awkward
things like that Swedish Fascist business weren't always turning up to
contradict him.'

'What was that?' asked Truda.

'Oh, I don't remember it very well, but there was a scandal in the
Stockholm papers over it a while ago. Apparently Gring... I think it
was Gring... went up to Sweden and made a deal with the leader of
the Swedish party by which Hitler was to contribute campaign funds in
exchange for an agreement that the Swedish Fascists were to turn over
the Northern Provinces when they got into power. Only someone in the
party was rather shocked, and spilled the whole story, which sort of
spoilt things for a while.'

'Why the Northern Provinces?' demanded Truda.

'I don't know. I think they have iron... or coal. I never _can_
remember which it is that Germany needs so badly to make her steel.
That's the reason she wants the Saar, isn't it?'

'Oh,' said Truda shrugging, 'she'll get the Saar.'

'Don't you be so sure,' said Christina.

'I'll bet anything you like on it,' said Truda. And a moment later, 'I
don't believe that story of yours, Elsa.'

'I didn't expect you to,' said Elsa coolly. 'Hitler's like the Pope;
once he ceases to be infallible and beyond reproach, he fades away, like
a puff of smoke.'

'What do you mean by that, exactly?'

'Nothing, mon amie.'

Truda looked at her uncertainly. She was never very sure of either the
Danish girl who never stopped sketching, or the Norwegian girl who never
stopped knitting, and wondered for the fortieth time why she liked them
in spite of it. She said rather hesitatingly, anxious to find some
justification for Elsa's story in case it happened to be true, 'A German
Empire mightn't be such a bad thing...'

'But I don't want to be German,' said Elsa plaintively. 'Do you, Chris?'

'Not much,' she admitted.

'Voila! You see, Truda, we just don't know what's good for us.' There
was something wrong with Truda's foot, she thought, and began to hunt
for her eraser.

'It's underneath you,' said Christina, glancing across at her from her
place on the other bed. 'You're sitting on it.'

'Thanks, Chris,' she said. 'What on earth would I do without you?'

'I've often wondered. I expect you'd end up with nothing to wear that
hadn't holes in it, no books, no pencils... no anything. What you
need is a nurse.'

'Why? Are you going to hand in your resignation?' Elsa extracted the
eraser from under her, rubbed energetically for a minute, then began to
sketch in Truda's foot for the second time. She was a dark girl with a
pale skin and blue eyes, nervous, vivid, and rather intellectual, in
contrast to the placid and serene domestic Christina. She could not sit
still; out of school she smoked incessantly; within the school she
sketched, and sketched well. Her pencil and pen-and-ink drawings were a
complete record of her life at Pensionnat Les Ormes, for she caught and
set down the people about her in all sorts of moods and attitudes. It
was as good training as she could hope for at the moment. She was
intending to study anatomical drawing, specializing in brain surgery and
spending most of her life in operating rooms. The following year she
would go to Brussels; in the meantime she had been sent to Switzerland
to relax. So far she had not relaxed at all, for she had matured early,
and the boarding-school routine made her both impatient and irritable.

Truda got up, went over to the basin in the alcove and gulped down a
glass of water. She was feeling bad-tempered, and was anxious to work
off her general dissatisfaction on someone, preferably Ilse or Anna,
chafing under the sense of frustration which had irked her ever since
the scene with Theodora in the dining-room. She leaned back against the
basin and said in her fluent but poorly-pronounced French, 'We have
different ideas of what's good for us, from the rest of the world...
but it's not their business. Anyone who's lived in Germany for long
knows what things were like until 1933. Ever since the war we've been
poor; the little money there was, was all in the hands of the Jews who
made it out of selling our soldiers paper-soled shoes and rotten flour
and rubbishy materials... even so they weren't beaten, they were
starved out along with the rest of the country under the blockade.
Outside the country, we were dogs with our tails between our legs;
inside, the Jews had a stranglehold on the little there was left. No one
thought we were any good; we didn't even think so ourselves. We had no
nationalism... the war had burst the country wide open, leaving
everyone wandering around in it like a crowd of bewildered children.'

Little Klaus and Big Klaus nodded solemnly from their place on the floor
by the radiator, and only succeeded in annoying her. She frowned at them
and went on, looking from Christina to the oblivious Elsa, 'Then Hitler
came into power. A little work is better than no work at least, a little
money earned honestly, better than unearned relief. The unemployed were
becoming a dead weight, unfitted for anything... don't forget we
starved during the war, which didn't do us much good physically, to
start with. Now, in the labour camps, the men work in exchange for a
little money... they'll get more when it can be given to them...
and the landowners are able to keep their fields tilled with the
landhelpers, instead of letting them lie and rot. You don't realize
it,... but it's exciting to live in Germany now... before, there was
nothing but waiting, waiting... for nothing but more waiting.' She
looked at Christina, who smiled and nodded in confirmation.

'If you've got millions of people with different ideas from yours who
simply won't co-operate, you've got to do something. In a time when
everything's so desperate, it's no good sitting about and arguing all
day, and letting people interfere with what you know has got to be done.
When there's a crisis, the country comes first, and I say let the Jews
go on wailing till all's blue... trust the Jews to make enough noise
to be heard right round the world!... and the Communists and
Socialists and Catholics can either shut up or go to work, or go to
concentration camps and learn what's good for them. Even if they don't
think it's right, they've absolutely no business to split up the country
and upset everyone by squeaking their own little miseries from the
housetops.'

'If they squeaked them,' remarked Elsa, 'they wouldn't be effective
enough to bother anyone. And what about the German women?' The foot was
all right now but she wanted Truda back in the group again. She could
not ask her to return to her former seat by the dressing-table when she
was in the middle of a speech to the opposition. Elsa looked down at her
sketch; there were Little Klaus and Big Klaus all complete, there was
nothing further to do to them. Truda's outlines, however, were a little
vague. She looked once more at the German girl still leaning against the
basin, then laid down her sketch-pad and resigned herself to delay.

'We've got to play our part, too.'

'Certainly,' said Elsa. 'I'm always willing to play my part...
provided it's recognized that my part is anatomical drawing and not
breeding children like guinea pigs.'

Christina looked a little worried. 'I wish you wouldn't be so... so
direct,' she said mildly.

'Scientific language,' said Elsa.

'Well, after all we're the ones who have children... I mean, men
don't...'

'They help,' said Elsa.

'Elsa!' said Christina reproachfully.

'All right, lambie.'

'And no woman wants to be married to a man who keeps house while she
goes out to work,' said Truda, continuing in spite of them.

'I don't want to get married, though,' said Elsa. 'I don't mean that
I've any objection to marriage... I dare say it's all right, but I'm
certainly not going to give up the work I've wanted to do all my life
for the sake of it, any more than I'd expect my husband, if he were a
doctor or a lawyer, for example, to give up practising medicine or law
in order to marry me.'

'Well, it's not up to you to get in the way, either,' said Truda. Elsa
raised her eyebrows but said nothing. 'And since it's a choice between
you getting a job and some man who is either supporting a family now or
will in the future, getting it, then you should stay home.'

'Why can't both Elsa and the man work?' asked Christina unexpectedly.

'I told you,' she said impatiently. 'There's not enough to go round.'

'Why isn't there?'

'Well, because there isn't, that's all.'

'Too many people?' asked Elsa. 'In proportion to the number of jobs?'

'Yes,' she said unwillingly, because she realized that once more Elsa,
with her infernal logic, was about to corner her.

'Then why this population of eighty-five million by 1960 or whenever it
is?'

'Why are you always trying to trip me up?' she burst out, with a hasty
glance at Little Klaus and Big Klaus. 'Do you think I know the answer to
everything?'

'No,' said Elsa, looking rather mischievous. '_I_ don't. And anyhow, my
dear Truda, so far as this making a place for the men with... or
without... families is concerned, I have twice as good a brain as the
average man... why on earth shouldn't I be allowed to use it?'

'Have you? It's nice of you to let us know about your wonderful brain,
anyway,' said Truda rudely.

Elsa sighed, looked angry for a moment, then said calmly, 'You know
perfectly well what I mean. The average mental age of the masses is
about fourteen.' She yawned suddenly and unexpectedly; she was becoming
rather bored, and took herself to task for it. After all, she was a
woman and she ought to have Views, but she hadn't any. Provided she was
permitted to do her own job, the rest of the world could get along as
best it might. In Belgium and in her own Denmark, her life would be
untroubled by all this dissension, and as a consequence she was
incapable of taking much interest in it. That was deplorably egocentric,
she thought, drawing blocks and triangles on the pad in front of her.
All the same, politics tended to be rather childish, for only children
believed that because one thing was true, the contrary must be false. It
suddenly occurred to her that there was no reason why Christianity
should be right and Taoism wrong... why couldn't they both be right?
She sat up, looking intently into space quite engrossed with this new
idea, and determined to start a discussion on it with Consuelo and Vicky
and Theodora at the first opportunity. Thank heaven, she thought
fervently, there are at least three girls in this school with some
brains, and some interest in things other than politics or clothes and
personalities.

'...so why does everyone pick on Germany?' the persistent Truda was
asking the room in general.

'We don't,' said Christina, and scrambling down from the high bed she
went over to the dressing-table. She smoothed out the front section of
the sweater and held it against herself, looking in the glass.

'It's awfully pretty, Chris,' said Elsa, anxious to change the subject.
'I wish I could wear that shade of blue... it makes _me_ look like a
vegetable marrow.'

'Don't be silly,' said Christina, turning round to scrutinize her. 'You
ought to have more self-confidence. You don't know how attractive you
are.'

'I certainly don't,' she said, looking amused. 'I'd agree with you
instantly if you were to suggest that I was a genius...'

'Remind me to suggest it some time, then,' said Truda. 'We've never
agreed on anything yet.'

Elsa looked at her rather affectionately. 'You'd be awfully nice,' she
said with a sigh, 'if only you'd stop crusading.' Then, for fear her
remark would be seized upon as an opening for further Fascist
propaganda, she went on hurriedly, 'I remember when I was little my
mother used to say wistfully, "You know, Elsa, I cannot understand _why_
it is that no matter what colour you wear, your face looks dirty." My
face usually _was_ dirty, perhaps that accounted for it. My mother never
knew it though. We had a nurse... a heavenly fat woman who was
fearfully lazy... who came from Germany, by the way, Truda... and
who told us all those fantastic legends of the Harz mountains, while she
should have been washing us. We had a sort of standing agreement...
my brothers and I... that no one should ever tell on her. My mother's
a sort of vague woman, anyhow... that is when it comes to domestic
matters. She's a writer, you know...'

'They should know,' said Christina. 'After all, Elsa Michielsen is
fairly...'

'Her books are banned in Germany,' said Truda.

'I know,' said Elsa junior. 'When her publisher told her that, she said,
"Now I _know_ I'm worth reading. At last I've had some real
encouragement," and retired into her study to begin another trilogy.'

'I shouldn't like to have a mother who spent all her time in a study
writing books,' observed Big Klaus. 'She wouldn't be like a mother at
all... she'd be like a... like a father.'

'You don't know my mother,' said Elsa reasonably. She chuckled a moment
later, and went on, 'She's sublime. She's an idiot. I _think_ she's also
a genius, and she's madly funny. She's the most entertaining human being
I've ever known... with,' she added thoughtfully, 'the possible
exception of my father.'

'How does _he_ like it?' demanded Big Klaus.

'He doesn't seem to mind,' said Elsa, still looking amused. 'I think he
_quite_ likes it. At any rate, he quite likes her, so that takes care of
that.' She realized that her background was as alien to the three German
girls as the background of the two Babaians, Natalia and Aime, and
decided once more to change the subject. That's the trouble in a place
like this, she thought... our home lives are all wildly dissimilar,
and there's no basis, no common ground most of the time, to make our
lives at school of any particular value. Or isn't there? What about
Theodora and Vicky and Consuelo? She shrugged; really her thoughts were
becoming remarkably disjointed and incoherent... in the middle of a
political discussion she suddenly wondered why Taoism and Christianity
were necessarily alternatives, and now, talking about her mother, she
began to wonder how much good it actually did any of them to come to
Switzerland to school... It only seemed to serve as a reinforcement
of their natural prejudices. Anyhow Elsa, she said firmly to herself,
get your mind on something and keep it there for a change.

'Do you think Vicky's pretty?' Truda was asking the room.

'Heavens, yes,' said Elsa, who had not the remotest idea how the subject
had come up, but was grateful because it did not contain any seeds of
contention. 'She has one of the most beautiful faces I've ever seen.
I've tried to sketch her time and again, and the only way I can get even
the faintest resemblance is by just suggesting her features.'

Big Klaus joined Christina by the mirror and stared at herself intently
for a moment. Her hair was light brown and stringy, and no matter how
much strength of mind she exercised, she still ate too much chocolate.
Her mother did not approve of pampering the young and giving them ideas,
nor was she, in truth, very careful in the choice of her own clothes. So
Big Klaus was doomed to mediocrity at sixteen, or so she gloomily
reflected as she looked at herself in the mirror. 'I think I should like
to look like Miss Ellerton,' she said rather wistfully. 'It's too bad we
can't choose what we look like, when we've only got one life, and always
have to wear the same face. Miss Ellerton's so... so sort of glowing...
as though she had a lamp lit inside her.'

Little Klaus said slowly, 'I think I'd like to be Vicky,' and scarcely
knew why she said it, for certainly Miss Ellerton was prettier with her
red-gold hair and small features.

'I don't think Vicky's very attractive,' said Truda. 'Those high
cheek-bones and her dark hair and her eyes... they're such a light
grey that they're almost like water...' And a moment later, 'She's so
odd she makes me feel queer, as though she weren't quite human'.

'Whom would you look like if you could choose, Truda?' asked Christina,
turning on the dressing-table chair to smile at the German girl, still
lounging against the basin.

'I don't know. Personally I don't think looks matter very much, and I
certainly don't admire anyone here enough to want to look like her. I
think I'd rather look like myself, although I suppose you think that's
very funny. You probably can't imagine anyone wanting to look like me!'
The passion with which she spoke and the fact that she was obviously
hurt in some obscure way caused Christina to deny her statement with
unusual feeling, and Elsa to look at her with scientific interest. What
was her background, that Truda should emerge from it so very unsure of
herself?

'How much longer is Ilse going to be allowed the run of our purses?'
Truda burst out in the embarrassed silence following her unexpected
display of emotion. Christina had abandoned the chair in front of the
dressing-table for her old place on the bed, and was busy casting on
stitches for the back of her sweater. Truda returned to her former
position, and went on, her face working, 'I've lost twenty francs, and I
needed them for a new pair of skates. Now I've got to go without any,
for my father won't send me any more money till Easter. I suppose Ilse's
such a pet of Mlle Devaux's that she'll _never_ be blamed for it...
beastly little Jew!'

'Ilse's not Jewish,' objected Christina. Elsa was sketching Truda's face
and could not afford the time to make an answer to her outrageous
accusations. If Truda was going to get worked up all over again, she
thought, she would soon find a sitting position intolerable and would
either pace the floor or go back to the basin again.

'Her mother is, and if you're half-Jewish, you're Jewish. Ilse _so_
sweet and _so_ gentle, she makes me sick. She hasn't any guts; she
creeps in and out of class with her "Oui, Mlle Devaux. Non, Mlle
Devaux", until I could scream.' She flushed, and spoke with an angry
intensity which robbed her usually musical voice of all its charm.
'She's got on my nerves so that I'd give just about anything not to have
to look at her for at least a week!'

'Everyone gets on your nerves who doesn't agree with you,' observed
Christina quietly. 'If I were you I'd take on someone who can give you a
good fight... Ted Cohen, for example. There's someone who's really
worthy of you, Trudy!'

'I hate her,' said Truda, ignoring Elsa's faintly mocking eyes, 'but
I'll say this for her, she doesn't hide behind anyone's skirts. She at
least doesn't sneak...'

'That's what I always say,' said Big Klaus. 'At least you know where you
are with her, which is more than you do with lots of the others...
the Babaians, for example... you never know what _they're_ thinking.
Anyhow, we just don't mix, most of the people here, and I don't see the
point of coming. Supposing we did like everyone here, we'd only have to
stop when we got home, because nobody there would agree with us.'

'I'm not so sure of that,' said Elsa, still sketching Truda who was
sitting rigidly in her chair by the dressing-table, her face stormy.
'Vicky likes everyone. She gets along marvellously with everyone, so I
suppose it can be done, if you only start out at least moderately free
of prejudices.'

'Vicky doesn't like me,' said Truda.

Elsa looked at her sharply, and said, 'Yes, she does, Truda.'

'How do _you_ know?' she asked ungraciously.

'She told me yesterday... or the day before, I've forgotten. As a
matter of fact,' she went on deliberately, 'we weren't talking about you
altogether... mostly about Anna von Landenburg.'

'Anna! What's she got to do with me? If Vicky thinks I'd have anything
to do with that... that...' She hesitated, for once in her life
afraid to say what she meant. Christina dropped her knitting and stared
at her, while the two on the floor by the radiator shifted a little and
looked very interested, as people do when they are about to hear
something malicious or unkind. Truda, however, still hesitated. She said
at last, 'Well, I'm not sure _what_ she is, but I've got a pretty good
idea, and I mean to make certain. Then something will happen, you can be
sure of that. I've got ways... I can write my father in Essen, and
things'll be not too easy for Graf von Landenburg!'

'You mind your own business,' said Christina, so angrily that the three
German girls, who had imagined that she was as gentle as she looked,
were astonished. Elsa, who knew her very well, did not even bother to
stop sketching. 'If you're so anxious to concern yourself with other
people, see if you can cheer up Marian Comstock... or try your
influence on Cay Shaunessy. She needs a little. I'm afraid she'll be
expelled, the way she's going on. Mlle Dupraix caught her smoking again
last night, and this morning she went down to that chocolate shop
without permission.'

'I'm not interested in Cay Shaunessy, thank you,' said Truda.

'I know you're not. The only people you're interested in are the ones
you can persecute. It's time someone gave you a piece of her mind, and
if you want to know what I think, it's about time you stopped and had a
good look at yourself too. We've been sitting here with you for more
than an hour, and in all that time you haven't made one single kind
remark about anyone. It's nothing but what's wrong with other people day
and night. As for Anna, she's as sick as a dog, and if you so much as
whisper a sentence to her, you'll deal with me, and you'll deal with
Elsa, and Theodora, and Consuelo... and, my dear Truda, you'll deal
with Vicky. You wouldn't like that, would you?'

'I'm not afraid of Vicky,' she said.

'No?' said Elsa. 'Well, I don't mind admitting that I'd rather have a
row with just about anyone than Vicky.'

'Yes,' said Truda slowly, 'maybe you're right.' The others were startled
at the sudden change in the tone of her voice. For some unaccountable
reason, even the mention of Vicky's name was enough to remind her of her
grandmother, and she sat beside the dressing-table in silence, unaware
of the effect she created, looking rather childish in spite of her long
legs and well-developed body. Her mind was suddenly filled with the
image of old Mrs. Meyer who had lived with her son and his family for
fourteen years... or rather above them on the third floor, refusing
to come down and share his home until the day she died. Like Vicky, she
feared no one; she used to stand in the centre of the drawing-room
leaning a little sideways on her stick with her black moir skirts
falling to the tops of her black leather boots, looking up at her son
quite unawed, no matter what he said. He might be telling her that from
now on she must stop her visits to the factory-workers' families, and
stop meddling in other people's business, because from these trips she
always returned depressed and troubled, would mount the stairs rather
faster than usual, lie down on the couch of her sitting-room on the
third floor and send for her son. He could never face her like that,
apparently, but the following day when they were all in the drawing-room
after dinner and Herr Meyer was reinforced by the presence of his wife
and child, he would issue his regular ultimatum. No more visits to the
workmen, no more meddling in other people's business. She would get up
from her high-backed chair by the fire... she always said she could
think better on her feet... listen to all he had to say, and when he
had entirely finished she would remark drily, 'Josef, my son, your tie
is crooked', and once more retire to her own quarters on the third
floor.

She was the only one who ever contradicted him when he talked about
keeping the lower orders in their places, and women in their homes,
although she usually contented herself with quite obviously paying no
attention to him. Meyer was rather afraid of her, and for a few months
after her death he was melancholy and more gentle with Truda and her
mother than was his wont. Then, gradually, he had become more stern and
more dominating than ever.

Truda missed her grandmother. Her mother was essentially the sort of
woman in whom such characteristics as courage, mental flexibility and
intellect have to be taken for granted, but Meyer was not the man to
foster and cherish such qualities in any human being with whom his
relationship was at all intimate, much less his wife. He was a stupid
man, and Truda considered her mother negligible, as a result of her
father's attitude toward his wife.

Old Mrs. Meyer had strongly protested against Truda's being sent away to
boarding-school when she was ten. The day she was to leave, her
grandmother had come down from her rooms to pace the floor of the
library with short, quick steps, stopping every now and then to utter
some particularly damning criticism of her son who stood silently with
his hands clasped behind him in front of the coal grate. Truda herself
was sitting in the corner by the door, her presence forgotten by both of
them.

She remembered her grandmother standing by the desk at the far end of
the room by the windows, and turning to say, 'The child is appallingly
sensitive. I tell you, Josef, I know what I am saying. In the impersonal
atmosphere of this... this school you are sending her to, the love
and understanding which are essential to the development of such a
temperament as hers will be absent. If you persist in sending her away
she will either go to pieces, or she will grow inwards. Truda demands
love such as you, Josef, have made no effort to give her.'

She came back to the centre of the room and gripping her stick, spoke
with an intensity and depth of passion which partially revealed to the
child in the corner, all the bitterness of disappointment which she had
felt for many years. 'You will answer for your stupidity toward your
wife and your child. You are my son, but I do not excuse you. If I get
to Heaven before you, I shall see that you answer for it... that is a
terrible thing for me to say, and yet I mean it. I am telling you that
if you send that child away now, you will be making an error which may
take years to rectify, which may never be rectified at all, for she may
become a human being like yourself.'

He had said angrily, 'That is the worst thing that could happen to her,
I suppose... to grow up to resemble her father.'

She had stood her ground, but her face was colourless and her skin
stretched like parchment on a drum as she answered, 'Yes, Josef. You
bring no happiness to other people; if you died there would be no less
goodness in the world. You would be no real loss to anyone.' And a
moment later, 'You are not evil, Josef... you are _null und nichtig_.
You exist, and He does not see you, for you are a person of no
importance.' She was breathing so heavily that Truda, hearing her
irregular gasps for breath, on the other side of the room, was afraid
that she would faint, but she turned and marched straight to the door,
across the hall and up the stairs more quickly than ever.

Truda found herself thinking as she sat by the dressing-table that this
confused and unhappy state in which she lived would not have been
possible if only she had seen more of her grandmother after she went
away to school. During the holidays she had avoided her, and seldom
climbed the three flights of stairs to her room, for when she got there
all her grandmother seemed to do was to lie on her couch and stare at
her... since they no longer had anything to talk about. In the summer
of 1933 she had died of angina.

In some strange way Vicky was like her, and yet not like her. They had
the same way of dealing with people, the same quiet certainty, but Vicky
made no use of her influence, and had, into the bargain, seemed to be
avoiding the conflicts of others as much as she could... she had not
been there at tea that afternoon, for example, and Truda had a shrewd
suspicion that when the scene between herself and Theodora was retailed
to her, she would heave a sigh of relief because, for once, she had not
been drawn in. That was not in the least like her grandmother.

The first bell rang for dinner. Little Klaus and Big Klaus leaped to
their feet and ran out, followed by Christina at a more dignified rate.
Truda stopped Elsa at the door, taking the sketch-pad from her hand.
'Let's see it, Elsa,' she said, and looked at it with an expressionless
face without waiting for the Danish girl's permission. 'I do look
charming, don't I?' she remarked, and returning the pad, went over to
the window to close her shutters. Elsa had an idea that she was crying,
but after glancing at her, decided to leave her alone, and went out.

3

Ilse Brning, sitting in her room with a copy of _Le Cid_ open before
her on the desk, heard the first bell ring for dinner and stiffened with
nervousness. She had been dreading and yet waiting anxiously for the
sound ever since coming up from tea two and a half hours before, and had
accomplished nothing during the interval. She was frightened; she had
been frightened for weeks. The approaching Sunday constituted an abyss,
a break in the continuity of time which seemed to widen as it came
nearer and nearer. For some it would be a day of triumph, for others a
day to be remembered as long as they lived, fraught with tragedy. Its
political implications were of no importance to Ilse. Whether the Saar
went to Germany, to France, or remained with the League of Nations was
to her a vitally personal issue. Her father was too ill to leave
Saarbrcken before spring; in the meantime their livelihood and the
whole of Ilse's little world revolved around and depended upon a young
Jew named Paul Mendelssohn. If, as Anna had said, Germany got the Saar
on Sunday, then it would be brought to the attention of the authorities
that Paul was active in the pro-League faction, and what then?

Ida had told her about a German Jew who was a relative of her family in
New York, a gentle old man who had never harmed anyone, Ida said, but he
had been stripped of everything he owned. On the last night before his
family left to take refuge in France, the police entered the house and
dragged him from the table where he was sitting at dinner into the
billiard room, where they spread-eagled him on the table...

Du lieber Gott! If they did that to a defenceless old Jew who had never
in his life dealt evil to a human soul, what horrible thing would Paul
have to suffer, when he was even at this moment, in all likelihood,
speaking against Hitler and his National Socialism? She was going to
marry Paul in the summer; they had loved each other ever since she was
fourteen and he twenty-one. He used to joke about it to her father,
'Don't forget, Herr Brning, Ilse belongs to me'. Then he had come to
live with them, and said it again one day when they were at lunch.
Suddenly, as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he had looked at
her across the table, and remained sitting motionless, still staring at
her as though he had never seen her before, while she felt her cheeks
growing hotter and hotter and no one seemed to be able to think of
anything to say until her father cleared his throat and asked, 'Shall I
tell Hans to prune the apple trees now, Paul, or is it too early in the
season?'

After that he had been very polite and did not tease her any more. Then
one day in the spring of the year before, when she had been picking
lilacs, he had said, 'We shall be married next summer on your eighteenth
birthday, Ilse?'

She had said, 'Yes, Paul', as though she had known it all the time. It
was growing dusk. Her memories of that early evening eight months before
were a confusion of sights, sounds and feelings. She remembered that a
cart had been going by on the other side of the high garden wall, that
the moon was just rising over the apple trees and that the lilacs had
suddenly seemed to send out more perfume than ever before as Paul took
her in his arms.

She tried to remember the garden more clearly as she sat at her desk,
having an idea that if only she could make herself believe that she was
there once more... would she ever be there again?... in all that
beauty and peace, then she would not be afraid of Truda, the very sight
of Truda; then she would not go about the school scanning every face
which was turned away from her, wondering if that girl too thought she
was a thief.

How could anyone imagine that she would steal? Why should they think
that she even wanted money? She wanted nothing in all the world but to
marry Paul and see her mother and father settled in a little house with
a garden close by. It was true that they were not rich, but at the
moment she had lots of money... she had more money than she knew what
to do with... she had a hundred francs. Paul had sent it to her two
days before, instructing her to be careful with it and not spend it on
something she needed. He had said in his letter, 'All your life it's
been a question of "Do you really need it?" Now please go and buy
yourself a pair of ear-rings, or two orchids, or a stuffed dog. If you
_need_ anything, let me know. Your father worries a lot about money but
really we are doing very well considering everything, and you must be
sure to tell me if there's anything you want. After all, we're
practically married.'

Such a silly letter for a man of twenty-five to write! But she was glad
he had written it, for he had said to her once, 'I can tell you anything
I like. It's one of ten thousand reasons why I love you so much. If I
were to say things like that to anyone else, he'd look at me with
that... oh, you know the look... Young man, you'll soon get over this
nonsense. That's what _that_ look says. Isn't it terrible the number of
things we're supposed to "get over", liebchen?' With everyone else he
was so dignified; when all the family had come from Paris last summer to
see them... heavens, how many parcels they had!... they had sat in
the living-room each night after dinner watching Paul, listening to him
talk about the political situation, nodding to each other and smiling.
'Paul is a fine boy, he will go far.'

What would he say if he knew they suspected her of stealing? He would be
very angry and would probably come at once and take her away, which
would never do, for though she might be a coward... and only she knew
how frightened of everything in life Ilse Brning was!... still, she
would stay at least until they found out who was doing it. She would not
tell Paul anyhow; he had enough to worry him already.

Why did he love her when she was not pretty and not at all clever?
Perhaps, one day, he might realize how plain and stupid she really was.
She had said that to him once, and he had been quite annoyed. He had
said, 'When you're with me, you're very pretty. If you're not pretty
when you're with other people, it doesn't matter, because soon you'll be
with me all the time... and even if you weren't, what difference does
it make? I think you always see what you want to see in the face of
someone you love. Even if something awful happened to your face, and no
one else was even able to recognize you, I should still see _my_ Ilse.'

She had been thinking of Paul and the garden that day when Truda thought
she was copying. When you were thinking hard about something, you simply
did not see what was in front of you. She had said that to Miss
Williams, who had understood, but Truda was not the sort of person who
was ever absentminded and she had not understood. Truda said that anyone
who would copy, would steal. Ilse supposed that was true, but she was
guilty of neither crime, whatever Truda thought, although now, when she
came into a room, she was aware of looks, of silences and whispering,
which were only natural perhaps, but she was so conscious of them and so
afraid that the others agreed with Truda, that she'd have given anything
to be able to lock herself in her room and stay there.

The second bell for dinner rang. Now she must go and sit at Miss
Williams's table with Truda directly opposite her, and she felt sick.
She always felt sick when she was very frightened. Suppose she _were_
sick in the dining-room in front of everyone?

Ilse got up and went out. At the door she stopped and suddenly darted
away down the hall to the left, past the main staircase, for she had
seen Truda's feet and ankles coming down the stairs from the floor
above. She wanted Vicky; she thought that if only Vicky would sit beside
her at dinner, she would be all right and she would not be sick. At the
back stairs she paused, looking upwards. Vicky's room was on the top
floor, and the sound of footsteps in the hall below was growing less...
they must all be in the dining-room now. She could not be late,
and be scolded by Mlle Tourain before the whole school. She fled back
along the hall and down the main staircase which only the staff were
permitted to use, arriving at the door of the dining-room just as
Marthe, Mlle Tourain's personal maid who waited on the head table, was
about to close it. Ilse Brning of Saarbrcken thought of Paul
Mendelssohn as she crossed the room to Miss Williams's table in the
centre of the south wall by the french windows, overlooking the Lake of
Geneva; if she could think of Paul sufficiently hard, she would not
think of Truda or the stealing, or the elections on Sunday, and she
would not be sick. That, at the moment, was more important than anything
else.




CHAPTER IV


Mlle Tourain was saying grace. Her mind was not on God, however; she was
watching a stout middle-aged woman in dusty brown making her way slowly
down a lane to a little house whose windows overlooked the gradual slope
to Ouchy. On either side of the lane was a wooden fence, blackened with
age and rotted by the incessant snows of winter, with lilacs hanging
heavily over the top. The fence was broken here and there by little
gates which led to other people's houses. The end gate on the right was
her own; the stout woman turned there, glanced for a last time at the
lilacs, then walked up the flagged path to the house, pausing now and
then to lean over a little breathlessly and examine the hyacinths which
grew in joyous disorder everywhere.

There was no one to look at the stout woman but Amlie Tourain, and she
scarcely recognized her. Apparently she lived in that house and only
went out through the gate once a day to take a walk at sundown. The
remainder of her life was spent in the small tidy study on the ground
floor, poring over books on Swiss Independence. There was something
faintly ridiculous about her, thought the acting headmistress of
Pensionnat Les Ormes rather uncomfortably, for she was utterly unaware
of the passage of time, and indifferent to the facts contained in the
newspaper which she read at breakfast each morning rather
absent-mindedly. She seemed to live with her back deliberately turned to
the rest of the world, to life itself.

The stout middle-aged woman in dusty brown had disappeared into her
house. A few minutes later a light glowed in the windows to the left of
the front door, and a shadow passed back and forth across the curtains.
Then the shutters were closed, and catching a brief glimpse of the
woman's face as she glanced up at the night sky, Mlle Tourain wondered
again at her remote tranquility.

The two people merged into one for a moment, then from the vision two
separate entities appeared, the one demanding insistently what was to be
done with the other. Either the headmistress of Pensionnat Les Ormes,
now engaged in saying grace, must cease to exist and Jeanne be informed
that a substitute must immediately be found, or the lilacs hanging over
the stout woman's particular section of fence be allowed to grow wild,
and dust to gather on her books.

There was the sound of fifty chairs being drawn back and then pulled
into place. Amlie Tourain discovered with relief that she had said
grace and was now sitting at the head of her table with the west windows
behind her. Turning her head to the left, she looked through the pantry
door and observing that the soup was not yet in evidence, allowed her
eyes to wander about the room. They eventually reached the face of Rose
Dupraix directly opposite her at the foot of her table, were caught, and
held. The Beaux Arts teacher was staring at her fixedly, as though
trying to communicate some idea.

It was a determined stare. From the compressed lips and the general look
of her, Amlie Tourain gathered that she was being reminded of some
unpleasant duty. But what? What on earth did the woman mean by looking
at her like that? It was excessively irritating.

Mlle Tourain suddenly recollected the girl whom Mlle Lemaitre was always
pleased to refer to as 'the unfortunate Vicky', and her cigarettes. Of
course, that was what Rose Dupraix's eyes were referring to. The
headmistress let out a barely audible sigh, and picking up her fork,
rapped on the table. There was immediate silence which continued
unbroken after the headmistress's peremptory 'Victoria! Stand up!' for
some time. It was not the headmistress's habit to so much as glance in
her victim's direction until she had heard a chair pushed back and a,
usually apprehensive, 'Oui, Mlle Tourain?' When she had waited, this
time rather longer than ever before, she raised her eyes at last and saw
the empty chair at Frulein Lange's table which seemed suddenly, as
everyone else turned to look at it, to be endowed with life, to have
taken on a personality of its own.

Frulein Lange stammered, 'She's not here, Mlle Tourain', and then
suffered a spasm of increased nervousness for having spoken when she had
not been spoken to, and into the bargain having offered a piece of
information which was perfectly obvious.

The headmistress let her off easily, however, with 'Even I can see that,
Frulein'.

Theodora darted a swift look at Frulein Lange's embarrassed face and
stood up.

'Well, Theodora, supposing you enlighten us. Where is Vicky?'

'She's with Rosalie,' answered Theodora briefly. She never wasted words
in a matter of this sort, knowing that with every extra one added, Mlle
Tourain's sarcasm increased. It was not that she was afraid of sarcasm,
for, as she had once remarked coolly to Mary Ellerton, 'I was very good
at it myself when I was Mlle Tourain's age', but that she disliked
public debate.

'I beg your pardon, Theodora?'

'I said, she's with Rosalie.'

'Oh. Am I to assume that you have already made arrangements for her
dinner, or have you left that to me?' Such a remark, spoken in such a
tone, was guaranteed to reduce any ordinary European girl either to
tears or at least to miserable incoherence.

Theodora continued to stand motionless with one hand on the back of her
chair, the other hanging loosely by her side, looking across at the
headmistress with a face which was quite unmoved. The sarcasm she
regarded as superfluous and indicative of either weakness or bad
breeding; one was not even sarcastic to servants, and she would have
considered herself a fool to be shaken by it from her habitually
reserved and deferential manner. At the same time, she had seen a good
many girls break down under it, and the sight rankled. She said, looking
innocent, 'Why no, Mlle Tourain. Vicky assumed that she would not get
any dinner, since we all know that we are only allowed to carry trays if
our room-mates are ill, and it's very good of you to let me do it...'

'I am _not_ letting you do it. Before you sit down, you might be so good
as to tell me _why_ Vicky is visiting Rosalie at this particular time,
when less privileged individuals are...' she stopped, horrified to
discover that she was on the point of saying '...are forced to drink
Mlle Dupraix's onion soup.' It was that silly woman's fault that she had
got herself into this ridiculous position and apparently she wanted,
senselessly and childishly, to be rude to her. She hastily sipped some
water to cover her confusion and then added lamely 'eating their
dinner'. The three words hung suspended in absurdity for a moment while
the appreciative school waited in silence.

Theodora glanced in a leisurely way around the room, then said at last,
'I was with Rosalie, and just as the bell went she asked for Vicky so...
so urgently that I couldn't object or refuse to get her. Vicky was
already on her way down to dinner when I caught up with her. She asked
me to explain to you afterward, for she hadn't time to get your
permission before you came into the dining-room.'

The headmistress was not looking at her, she was watching one of the
maids carrying a soup-tureen across the room to Miss Williams's table.
Theodora forced herself to go on, anxious to put Vicky in a reasonable
light, 'Rosalie's been very homesick all day. You know Vicky's the only
other Canadian here...' Mlle Tourain's obliviousness made her
thoroughly self-conscious, so much so that her voice seemed to belong to
someone else. I really seem to be the only person who's listening to
Theodora Cohen, she thought with her usual humour. The headmistress
continued to ignore her; she was ladling out the soup for her own table
now and had evidently decided to employ her customary method of closing
a conversation which was proving either awkward or boring, by suddenly
ceasing to pay any attention. That left the other person more or less
stranded, until he or she made a bad exit.

With a shrug for Amlie Tourain's manners, Theodora sat down. Frulein
Lange, ladling out the soup which, after some nine hundred dinners at
Pensionnat Les Ormes she was still afraid of spilling, said without
thinking, 'Vicky shouldn't go without her dinner, it's bad for her', and
then cast a quick, embarrassed glance around her table, because it was
not seemly for a teacher to express opinions contrary to authority,
particularly before the girls.

Theodora slid down a little in her chair and said, 'Don't worry,
Frulein, Vicky won't go without her dinner.'

Yasha, usually so careful not to involve herself in anything, said
surprisingly, 'If you're going to get a tray from one of the maids, I'll
help you.'

Natalia's quick sidelong glance showed that she too was startled, but
she said nothing. Theodora smiled. 'That's awfully good of you, Yasha,
but I think I'll just tip one of the maids to do it... it's simpler.
I've been caught carrying trays to Vicky before this, too many times.'

There was a short silence as they began their soup. Then Stephania
remarked as her eyes fell on Mlle Lemaitre's thin, feverish bird-like
face in the opposite corner, 'You know, she looks worse... she looks
_much_ worse...'

The German mistress said, 'Mlle Lemaitre?'

'Yes,' said Stephania.

'I really think she ought to be in a warm climate, but when I said
something to her about the south of France the other day, she wouldn't
listen. She comes from Clermont, you know. She says, however, that they
only discovered how bad the air of the Midi was for people with
bronchial trouble when several thousand people who'd gone there to be
cured, all died.'

'Maupassant had a short story on that,' observed Theodora, then
corrected herself. 'No, it's in _Sur l'Eau_, isn't it?' she asked
Natalia, who nodded. 'You remember, it begins, "Des princes, des
princes, partout des princes! Ceux qui aiment les princes sont
heureux..." Which always reminds me, for no reason at all, of that
uncle of Bertie's who rushed down to breakfast one morning, lifted
the covers off the dishes, peered into them, said, "Eggs, eggs, damn
all eggs!" and retired to the south of France never to return to the
bosom of his family.'

'As you say, there doesn't seem to be any reason why princes, princes,
princes everywhere should remind you of eggs, eggs, damn all eggs,'
remarked Yasha.

'I have that kind of mind,' she said loftily. 'It's subtle, that's all.
I see relationships and connections which people of coarser intellect
miss entirely.' She turned to Natalia again. 'You remember that
paragraph in _Sur l'Eau_ which begins "Heureux ceux qui ne connaissent
pas l'coeurment abominable des mmes actions toujours rptes; heureux
ceux qui... qui..." What is it?'

'"...ont la force de recommencer chaque jour les mmes besognes avec
les mmes gestes..." C'est nous, Teddy, hein?'

'"Heureux ceux qui ne s'aperoivent pas avec un immense dgout que rien
ne change, que rien ne passe et que tout se lasse",' finished Theodora,
her head nodding in agreement. 'It's certainly us, all right.'

'Disillusioned schoolgirl,' said Yasha sadly, 'admiring Maupassant and
his impassioned cynicisms...'

'Very good,' said Theodora. 'I take back my remark about your coarse and
unsubtle intellect.'

'Oh, was that intended for me?'

'Mais, naturellement,' said Theodora.

Frulein Lange was looking at them in dismay, wrenched from her troubled
thoughts by what she regarded as still another incomprehensible
exhibition of precocity. She shook her head hopelessly, and said,
looking from one to the other, 'I should think you were twenty-five, to
hear you talk. How old are you, Theodora? And you, Yasha? And you,
Natalia?'

'Practically twenty-one,' said Theodora. 'Too old for this intellectual
vacuum.'

'Nineteen,' said Yasha.

'Twenty,' said Natalia, smiling at the German mistress.

'I don't know what's the matter with you,' said Frulein Lange
unhappily. 'None of you are in the least like ordinary young girls,
except Maria-Teresa.'

'Well, I should hope so,' said Theodora. 'After all, she's only fifteen,
and almost feeble-minded into the bargain.'

'Zitto!' said Maria-Teresa. 'Basta di te...'

'Maria-Teresa,' said Frulein Lange rebukingly. 'You're supposed to be
learning French here.'

'Shut up then, you idiot,' said Maria-Teresa in French.

'Can't you be polite in _any_ language?' asked Frulein Lange
despairingly.

'She's awfully lady-like in Mandarin,' said Theodora, and added a moment
later, 'I see that the Cummings-Gordons have at last found their own
level. They're with Mlle Tourain,' she added, gesturing in explanation
toward the head table across the room.

'Now, Theodora,' said Frulein Lange reprovingly, 'they're good
students...'

'...and?'

'They're never disobedient. You would do well to follow their
example...'

Maria-Teresa said imploringly, 'No! Two of them are quite enough.
Besides that, if you suggest anything to Teddy she takes you up on it.
She's bad enough as she is. If she becomes virtuous as well, she'll be
unbearable... insupportable!'

'What do you think they'll talk about at Mlle Tourain's table?' asked
Stephania.

Yasha yawned, looked at the remainder of her soup with an unfriendly
expression and said, 'First of all, ski-ing at Gstaad. Then Swiss
respectability...' The word was out before she could stop herself and
she looked apologetically at Frulein Lange to see if she had taken the
remark amiss, but the German teacher's mind was only half following the
conversation; in the background was her intention of asking Mlle Tourain
after the faculty meeting if she might go home that week-end. That had
been Vicky's idea. At the end of her tale of worry and alarm, she had
said, 'Why don't you go to Zrich Saturday morning, take your sister to
a doctor yourself and set your mind at rest?'

It had not occurred to her that she could do that. 'We're only allowed
one week-end a month,' she had objected, 'and I took that two weeks
ago.'

'Supposing you did? Are you ten years old, Frulein?'

'No,' she said. 'I am not, as you very well know.'

Vicky laughed. 'You can explain it all to Mlle Tourain. I'm sure she'll
understand if you tell her your sister is ill and you feel it necessary
to see her. You wouldn't be missing any classes.'

Of course, if you looked at it in that light, there was no reason why
she shouldn't go. So now, sitting at dinner, she was steeling herself to
remain behind after the faculty meeting and ask permission to take an
extra week-end. In all her three years at the school she had never
dreamed of asking a favour, and she was astonished at her own courage.
Nevertheless, she would ask for it, and she would go. Only one more day
and she would see Maria. Sylvia Lange, what on earth are you coming to?

Mary Ellerton, hearing snatches of conversation from Yasha, Natalia and
Theodora at the next table, sighed rather wistfully as she served her
six girls with dried beef and watery vegetables. None of them, taken
separately, was very interesting, but combined they managed to produce
quite disproportionate dullness. If brilliant conversationalists
converse more brilliantly when stimulated by each other's minds, she
thought, trying to divide the remaining carrots into three equal
servings, the opposite is true of mediocrities. General interest here
stopped at clothes and personalities.

There was, at the other end, one Henriette Martin from Mulhouse, a
strange girl with a sallow complexion and a puffy nose. She had an
atrocious accent, her French never having recovered from the German
occupation of Alsace-Lorraine. She said 'piang' for 'bien', and
'maissong' for 'maison'; her f's were all v's, and her v's all f's. She
hissed her s's and was liable to spatter you if you came too close. She
never took baths. It was easy to find out whether a girl did or did not,
because on Thursdays and Mondays if one wished a bath one called 'Bain',
instead of ski-ing, skating, walking, hockey, or 'en ville', which
denoted shopping, when the roll was taken for the afternoon recreation.
Why, Mary asked herself heatedly, should baths be an alternative to
ski-ing, skating, walking, hockey or shopping?

Next to Henriette was Rose Budet. Mary had nothing against her
specifically, except a remark she had made on Mary's first day at the
school. Hearing that the girl came from Brussels, Mary had said, 'Oh,
then perhaps you know Natalia's family?' Whereupon the Budet... her
name lent itself to alteration with unfortunate ease... stated with
finality that she was not in the habit of associating with Armenians.

Opposite Rose were Cissie and Ruth Anderson from Manchester. They, and
the two Cummings-Gordon girls from Philadelphia, were the chief
exponents in the school of refinement and gentility. The four got along
rather badly together, though, for whereas the two from Manchester
believed that respectability and decency were confined to England, the
two from Philadelphia considered that the only really enlightened
country in the world was the United States. Cissie and Ruth were small
and rather thin with heavy dark brown hair which was waved each week by
the school hairdresser. Their eyebrows were plucked to a thin,
unbecoming line and always looked a little raw. They put on their
make-up badly and were over-conscious of the male sex. Cissie Anderson
was the oldest girl in the school and consequently considered that she
was out of her element. Mary would have sympathized with her a little
more if she had not been twenty-two, and old enough, one would have
thought, to be treated as an adult by her parents. Her sister Ruth was a
year younger; her nose and chin were pointed and her features in every
way less attractive than Cissie's, but she possessed more vivacity and
more colour to make up for it. Mary had spent a month watching their
crooked fingers as they delicately lifted their food to their mouths,
and often wondered whether they would have been so unlady-like as to
chew at all, if they could have managed to swallow their food without
doing it. As it was, they chewed with their front teeth as much as
possible; that made the whole business of mastication less gross,
apparently.

Of the two others present, Ida Samuels was a Jewish girl from
New York... 'or the Bronx', said Theodora, 'which, my dear Mary,
is an entirely different thing'... with a general air of over-sexed
vulgarity. Her one asset was her legs. The possession of even remarkably
beautiful legs might not have greatly altered the course of anyone
else's life, but Ida did wonders with them. She had once bored Mary
almost to tears with a story about a country-club dance in Westchester
when she had spotted an attractive boy on the other side of the room
whom no one knew but whom every girl there was dying to meet. She, Ida
Samuels, had simply lifted her skirts a few inches and he had come right
over. There had been a lot more of it, along the same lines, but Mary
had managed not to listen. Ida had been tried out by all the other
cliques in the school but none of them had been able to stand her and
she had been forced to fall back on Henriette and Rose who considered
her marvellously sophisticated, and also to a certain extent on the
Andersons who were not very popular.

She would have been harmless enough, Mary knew, if her mind had not been
of an extremely sensational turn; unlike Theodora she was very conscious
of being Jewish and would have denied it if it had been possible. To
excuse it, and endow both Jewry and therefore indirectly herself, with
importance, she read avidly everything the newspapers contained about
Jewish persecution and ill-treatment, choosing Ilse and Anna as an
audience to be preferred above any other, because it was on them that
her words had their greatest effect. She and Theodora hated one another.
On the famous occasion when Theodora had hit her across the face for
retailing the anecdote of the bloody flag to Anna von Landenburg, she
had not hesitated to go straight to Mlle Tourain with the story. That
stalwart soul told Ida that she had got no more than she deserved, then
called in Theodora... after Ida had returned, raging, to her room...
and informed _her_ that she had behaved like a Billingsgate fish-wife,
which Theodora very well knew. Ten days later a cable arrived
informing Mlle Tourain that Mr. and Mrs. Samuels were leaving for Europe
in order to remove their Ida from the school, as soon as Mr. Samuels
could leave his leather business, and that they would take the matter up
with the American consul if Theodora were not immediately expelled. The
headmistress meditated on the cable for a while, then dropped it in her
waste-basket and did nothing. The Samuels did not arrive.

The only girl at her table whom Mary really liked was a red-haired child
from Seattle named Cay Shaunessy. Hers was, thought Mary, the most
extreme case of parental indifference she had ever come across. Her
mother had deposited her at Pensionnat Les Ormes the preceding
September, informing Mlle Tourain that she would return for her three
years hence, and then immediately sailed on a freight boat bound for
California, leaving her daughter to endure the worst case of
homesickness which even Mlle Dupraix with her twenty years as
housekeeper and eight years as Beaux Arts mistress had ever seen. It had
taken the combined efforts of the whole staff to persuade Cay to stop
crying and get up from her bed at the end of her first three weeks in
the school. From then on, Mary had gathered from their reports, she had
followed the pattern set down by thousands of homesick school-children
of previous generations. She had recovered from her wild and hysterical
unhappiness to drift into complete apathy, from there first to tentative
and carefully-concealed misconduct, and then to open and incessant
disobedience. Mary knew from her own experience at boarding-school,
having seen other girls of Cay's temperament, that she would continue in
this last stage until she was expelled, unless someone could influence
her. So far no one, not even herself, had been able to get beyond that
stony, aggressive exterior. Mary caught her smoking and said nothing
about it to the headmistress; she tried to forestall her numerous...
and often successful... attempts to break bounds; she tried to reason
with her, but Cay was too appalled by the prospect of fifty-four endless
months to be endured before she got out of Pensionnat Les Ormes for
ever, to care what was said or done to her.

Mary worried about her more than Cay ever realized, knowing that she
could not keep her out of the limelight much longer, for she had other
things to do besides watch that girl from eight in the morning to ten at
night. She came to the conclusion that Mrs. Shaunessy and her husband
had been supremely unwise in ever permitting such an issue to arise, for
the school was bad for Cay, and expulsion would be equally bad for her
by giving her her own way through anarchic means.

Mary was interested in the whole question of Catherine Shaunessy from a
philosophic as well as a personal point of view, since the problem
presented by Vicky's unusual temperament had first made her realize how
grave an error is often committed by authority in allowing a difference
to become an issue, in erecting an obstacle between itself and another
person so that one or the other has to climb over it. For Cay either to
gain or lose her point would be equally bad for her. Mary had seen
similar situations between Vicky and Mlle Tourain. The headmistress
would question her publicly about something which concerned someone
else, Vicky would shut up like an oyster, and the headmistress would be
justly angry because her authority had been outraged by a small, slender
girl who merely refused to talk.

From Vicky, Mary's mind wandered to her husband... or rather her
ex-husband... they being the two people in the world whom she most
loved. She often found herself holding imaginary discussions with him
when she was puzzled, for she knew his mind so well that in that way she
could get an outside opinion. She never made the mistake of thinking of
him as an extension of herself. Or did she? This new person which she
had become and whom he did not know was at the same time born of him in
some obscure way, for she had admired that part of him which was not
concerned in their personal relationship. His clarity and profundity of
mind, his passion for people, had all had their effect on her, she knew,
for the Mary Ellerton she had been before marriage was a nice, but at
the same time rather oblivious and limited outdoor girl. She supposed
that it was she, and not the present Mary Ellerton, who found the
Andersons and their crooked fingers so extraordinarily irritating. All
the same, she thought, spearing the last piece of beef, there seemed to
be no real and valid reason for the existence of such people as the
Andersons, except in so far as they served as a reminder of virtues
now... fortunately... almost extinct. Like the Albert Memorial, she
added mentally, and then noticed that Cay had scarcely touched her
dinner.

'Eat some of that, Cay,' she said. 'You can't live on air, you know,
even in Switzerland.'

The little red-head with her fine nose and thin mouth which would, Mary,
believed, have a twist of humour in it later on, did not even look up.
She said in a rather muffled voice, 'This isn't beef... it's horse.
"Beef" is just a polite word for it.'

'Well,' said Mary, smiling at her, 'Beef or horse, you'd better eat it.
You're quite thin enough already.'

'You know,' said Cay suddenly in English, 'If there were more people
like you around here, I shouldn't mind it so much.'

****

At Mlle Devaux's table Consuelo Deane from So Paulo, Brazil, was
thinking about her brother Juan. She visualized his dark face... in
such contrast to her own fairness... his six feet three inches of
ugliness, which for some reason seemed to reduce the average woman to
gibbering idiocy, and hoped that Theodora was not going to disgrace
herself by falling in love with him. She had seemed to be contemplating
it when Juan departed for Paris the previous week; Consuelo knew them
both too well, and she could not imagine which of them would emerge from
the affair most shattered... it would probably be Theodora, she
thought. Still, there was no way of telling. After trying to envisage
the outcome of such an unfortunate union... well, perhaps the word
'union' was hardly apt under the circumstances, although you never could
tell... while she ploughed through her meat and vegetables for the
sake of the necessary nourishment, she shrugged, summing up the affair
in advance with, 'Of course, they'll both go nuts'.

A moment later she realized that Mlle Devaux had twice asked her a
question. She looked across the table at the nervous grammar teacher,
and attempted to bring back the remark from her unconscious mind, if
that were the place where it had taken refuge, into her memory. She had
heard it all right, but it had instantly been relegated to the
background in order to make room for Juan and Theodora. She struggled
for a moment, then recollected. 'Marian's not well, Mademoiselle,' she
said.

'I know that,' said Mlle Devaux impatiently. 'Everyone knows that. But
what's the matter with her?'

Consuelo looked down at her plate, straightened her knife and fork, then
answered deliberately, 'She is indisposed'. The word referred to a
specific condition; Consuelo knew very well what a delicate matter it
was, and knew also that the Swiss woman would not have the courage to
pursue the topic any further. Some of the others at her table were not
so inhibited; from their amused glances Consuelo gathered that they did
not believe her.

She was quite indifferent to everyone in the vicinity, and devoted to
her room-mate. With one eyebrow cocked she looked blandly round the
table, then dropped her eyes to her plate once more. What she saw there
was not particularly pleasing... a piece of rubber-like carrot, and a
bit of fat. Consuelo did not like fat. She wrinkled her beautiful nose
at it, folded her long white hands on the edge of the table, and
transferred her gaze to the lithograph on the wall behind Christina's
head opposite her. The lithograph was a peculiarly revolting picture of
a distressed stag struggling down some perpendicular rocks, but during
the past two years Consuelo had become accustomed to it. The preceding
September she had been delegated by Mlle Tourain to act as escort to
Vicky on her first day at the school; having completed a tour of
inspection which lasted half an hour, during which neither the Canadian
nor the South American said very much, for they were both rather silent
by nature, Consuelo led her into the dining-room, across to the far
corner, and sat down in a chair looking at the lithograph quite
intently, with a melancholy expression, while Vicky stood beside her,
rather at a loss.

'You see that?' said Consuelo.

'Yes,' said Vicky.

'It's most interesting... most interesting.'

'Really,' said Vicky.

'Yes. But you don't know why?'

'No,' admitted Vicky. 'I mean I've seen better things in butcher shops,
haven't you?'

'That's not the point.'

'No?'

'No. It's the philosophy of the thing.'

'I see. I suppose it takes time to grasp it, or else I'm fearfully
dense.'

'I've been looking at it for two years,' said Consuelo. 'It has now come
to mean a great deal to me... as an illustration of the principle
that you can get used to anything. After a great deal of thought, I have
come to the conclusion that I can now state with absolute honesty that I
_am_ used to it.'

'Really,' said Vicky again. 'Then it's certainly worth while to stay
here two years.' But, with a further glance at the lithograph, 'I'm not
sure that it wouldn't take me longer, though.'

Consuelo, remembering that conversation of the previous September,
chuckled to herself, then once more her mind reverted to her room-mate,
Marian Comstock. She was not indisposed; Mlle Devaux knew it, and
Consuelo knew that she knew it. She had taken to her bed ten days
before, the afternoon following the receipt of a letter from her mother
in South Africa, in which she had written that her trip to Europe from
Port Elizabeth had had to be postponed until the summer of 1936, and
that her daughter was to remain in the school for a further eighteen
months. Marian had then behaved in a way which Consuelo considered very
alarming, for besides going to bed and refusing to get up, she was also
refusing to eat. She was by nature a very gentle, unobtrusive girl, who
had never before been known to break a rule.

There was no point in telling Mlle Tourain about her, thought Consuelo,
for all the headmistress would do would be to look up some book or
other, find a passage headed 'Passive Resistance', or 'Food-Strike', or
some such no doubt interesting but hypothetical case, and apply the
treatment prescribed, to Marian. Or she would employ her usual exuberant
manner and say, 'Now then, Marian, get up, there's a good girl. If you
don't, you won't be able to go to Gstaad next week, you know... and
think how you enjoyed it last year and the year before... This is
your third year, isn't it? I thought so.' As if that would do any good,
thought Consuelo irritably.

What Marian needed was to get out for the week-end, see a few attractive
men, do a little dancing, and have it proved to her that she was still
alive, in the face of all the evidence supplied by Pensionnat Les Ormes
to the contrary, she added mentally. Only, if she were to go out
Saturday with Juan and herself, she would have to be induced to get up
to-morrow... Friday... for Mlle Tourain would never permit Marian
to go straight from a supposed sick-bed to the Palace Hotel.

****

At Mlle Lemaitre's table in the corner they were discussing the coming
performances of _Le Malade Imaginaire_, _Le Mdecin Malgr Lui_, and
_L'Etourdi_, which a touring company from the Comdie Franaise was
playing in Lausanne the following week. Mlle Lemaitre deplored the
choice of that particular week for the removal of the entire school to
Gstaad, and was trying to make up for it a little, by giving to her
table as full an account of each play as possible.

She was excited; her habitually jerky and vivacious manner was, to-day,
especially obvious, for she was feeling ill. Her cheeks were flushed,
the rest of her face so white and dry and the ending of colour along her
nose and chin so abrupt that she looked like an amiable vulture.

Little Klaus and Big Klaus sitting on either side of her were paying
almost no attention to her long quotations from _L'Etourdi_; Elsa and
Ina Barren, a small, plain English girl from Southampton, were
attempting to eat and look at her at the same time, for neither of them
wished her to think that she was not listening... they _were_
listening, but they had to give visible proof of their undivided
attention, for Mlle Lemaitre was firmly convinced that modern girls had
no manners; she was very exigeante and expected them to keep their eyes
riveted to her face when she was talking, and if their glance wandered
away for so much as a moment, she would suddenly stop and swoop down on
her victim and accuse her of impoliteness. Anna von Landenburg, at the
foot of her table, was quite obviously wrapped up in her own thoughts,
but Mlle Lemaitre, for reasons best known to herself, ignored it. As a
matter of fact, although none of her girls knew it, she was paying no
attention to herself, having long ago reached that ideal point of
concentration for a teacher, when one is able to talk on one subject and
allow one's mind to revolve around quite another at the same time.

She was wondering whether mere existence for five or six more years in
Switzerland would be preferable to a year or so of life in Paris...
That was the most she could hope for in such a climate, and if she lived
carefully, her savings would last her two years. She had no relatives;
in Clermont, where she had lived and taught in her father's school until
she was thirty, and had managed to scrape together enough money to put
herself through the Sorbonne, there was no one who even remembered her
very well. She had not been back since before the war, when she had
spent two weeks there after getting her degree, in the belief that the
climate of Clermont could work miracles with her health which had been
badly undermined by three years of working for eighteen hours a day,
with insufficient food. Her activities since that time she had once
described to Vicky as, 'Ten years in a Lyce, one year in hospital as a
result of it; eleven years in a private school at Passy, and three years
at Pensionnat Les Ormes as a result of _that_.'

She was neither tolerant nor warm-hearted, but she was extremely fond of
Vicky, although she would probably have over-worked her as she had
over-worked herself, if Mlle Tourain had permitted it. She had singled
out Vicky for special attention four months before, kept her in her room
for many hours a week, giving her an extraordinary amount of
miscellaneous information, as though she were racing against time. They
had spent the last week of the Christmas holidays together, following
Vicky's return from Stephania Carr's home in Milan, a week during which
Mlle Lemaitre sat in her rocking chair and talked of Voltaire and
Rousseau from nine in the morning to seven at night, sketching in the
background formed by eighteenth century Europe with such vividness and
clarity that as long as she lived, Vicky knew, she would remember those
two men as that exhausted, vital Frenchwoman made her see them.

She had been told by her doctor in Paris that if she had devoted a
twentieth of the time she had laboured with her mind to caring for her
body, this would never have happened. 'This' referred to four attacks of
pleurisy which had left her bronchial tubes in a state which, she had
quoted once to Vicky with a humorous light in her black eyes,
'positively defy my powers of description, Mlle Lemaitre,' according to
the doctor. But she did not regret it. 'What is the body? It is at best
an inefficient and unpleasant mechanism, something which we use for a
while and discard like an old coat. But the mind... Ah, the mind, that
goes on. It is immortal. The mind of Christ, of Bach, of Leonardo...
that is what matters. The rest... pouf! It is nothing, Veecky.'

****

Miss Williams was trying without much success to interpose her
personality between Ilse on her right, and Truda on her left. She
had introduced various topics of conversation but neither of them
listened... Ilse _appeared_ to be listening, but Truda would not even
make that much effort. The little Saarlander sat with downcast eyes;
every now and then she raised them to glance fleetingly and unseeingly
at the English teacher's face for the sake of good manners, but Truda
merely sat and ate with evident enjoyment, ignoring Miss Williams
altogether, and appearing to be staring at Ilse across the table even
when she was obviously not staring at her. Miss Williams became more
and more flustered. Her face was rather more red than too many English
winters had already tinged it; she upset her glass of water and kept
clearing her throat from time to time as though she hoped in that way
to clear the atmosphere.

She began to talk about spring in England. It seemed a safe topic but
after a while she became so engrossed in it that she forgot all about
Ilse and Truda, and scattered her remarks in a disjointed manner,
pausing now and then to look at Aime, the only girl at her table who
seemed to be paying any attention to her. Aime, however, always
appeared to be paying attention. In spite of Natalia's statements, Miss
Williams suspected that the younger of the two Armenian cousins knew no
English at all. There was no way of finding out. She wrote very proper
and prim little essays for Miss Williams, but it was more than possible
that Natalia did them for her. She sat, at the opposite end of the
table, her long black eyes fastened on the Englishwoman's face,
expressionless, enigmatic, disconcerting.

Miss Williams ceased to be conscious of the eyes after a while, for she
was in her father's rectory in Kent. It was tea time, and the
dining-room was rather dark, a long 'tunnel of green gloom' for the
lilac bushes grew against the windows. The fire-place was brick, with
some brass bowls of violets on the mantelpiece, the polished table was
covered with blue china, and there were ferns hanging by the windows.

She was suddenly despairing of a life which so senselessly forced her
away from the only place in which she was ever at home and at ease, that
drove her out into a world which, however she might try to adapt
herself, remained alien and unnatural to her. She thought that if she
could only go back to her father's house on the Medway, if she could
only stay there, for ever watching the turning of the world through its
four seasons, from the rectory garden, life for her would possess
meaning, continuity and purpose.

She found herself silent again, and hastily asked the table in general
if they had ever been in England. The table in general, consisting as it
did of one German, one Saarlander, an Armenian, a Hungarian, and a small
dark vain creature from Buenos Aires, had not. This Miss Williams very
well knew, and in the mildly surprised silence which followed, she began
to wonder if she had taken leave of her senses, and if her incoherent,
unhappy thoughts were as audible to the others as they seemed to
herself.

Broken sentences, pronouns, nouns, verbs, adjectives, clauses torn from
their context rose from the six tables into the air, and then lapsed
back into the medley of sound; dishes clattering, voices whispering,
laughing, talking; forty-five girls fidgeting... fifty-two human
beings eating their dinner in the dining-room of a Swiss school
overlooking Lausanne and the Lake of Geneva.

'It's pure satire,' said Mlle Lemaitre, back on the subject of Molire.

'...six black Shetland ponies...'

'...and my dear, they made us _walk_ to Chillon! It must be at
_least_ twenty kilometres...'

'I've never yet found a Swiss, man or woman, who knew the name of the
president of Switzerland...' from Theodora.

Then Mlle Tourain's voice, bored, pitched low, with an occasional lift
which said that she was dutifully injecting a little interest into her
remarks, 'They met in a wood, each man bringing six others with him,
making twenty-one altogether, and that was the beginning of Swiss
Independence.'

'...like Thophile Gautier's cats, only his taste ran to white mice.
He had hundreds, all over the house.'

'Have you ever seen a flautist who wasn't bald? My brother took up the
flute three years ago, and he's already getting thin on top. After all,
if you persist in such an unnatural passion as blowing sideways for
heaven only knows how many hours a day, you've got to expect something
to happen...' This was from Elsa, manfully making an effort to amuse
Anna von Landenburg, who was sitting motionless at the foot of Mlle
Lemaitre's table on Little Klaus's right, drawing innumerable lines on
the tablecloth with a spoon.

'_Mlle de Maupin_ is not suitable for young girls,' said Mlle Devaux
severely to the imperturbable Consuelo.

'...so, of course with all _that_ money, there's no chance of his
going to a quiet little place like Gstaad this year...'

'She was the sort of woman who keeps dead flowers around the place so
that when her young men come to call and remark on the depressing effect
created by two dozen brown roses, she can sigh wistfully and remark,
"Yes, but you know, even dead flowers are better than none at all", and
they're morally obliged to step in at a florist's on their way home and
do something about it.'

'...and _just_ what every woman has always wanted... a combination
radio-vacuum cleaner.'

'Ilse,' said Miss Williams, 'you've eaten nothing. You will be ill.'

Ilse shook her head quickly and glanced up imploringly at the little
Swiss maid who was clearing their table, and who evidently understood
for she removed her plate without waiting for her to finish, and started
across the room with it. She only got as far as the head table, for Mlle
Tourain, seeing the untouched meat and vegetables, said sharply, 'Whose
plate is that, Belle?'

She stopped and blushed. 'It's Mlle Ilse's,' she said.

'Ilse!' said Amlie Tourain, raising her voice. She began to say
something, then thought better of it, and her voice trailed away into
silence. Shaking her head slightly with a vague, wandering look about
the room, she began to serve the sweet, which was some kind of thin
cream flavoured with strawberry jelly.

She had a feeling of being smothered, mentally and physically, by the
Cummings-Gordon on either side of her. Elizabeth was on her right, Helen
on her left. They were both fat, although Helen was the fatter of the
two. It is possible to be good in such a way that one's goodness,
tempered by humour and understanding, shines as a positive and unvarying
light over one's own life and the lives of those with whom one comes
into contact; the Cummings-Gordon girls were good, but their goodness
was not of that order. It was almost wholly negative; one could have
described them by what they would never dream of doing, what they
strongly disapproved of others doing, rather than what they actually
did. When they returned to their home in Philadelphia, Mlle Tourain
knew, their relatives and friends would say with satisfaction, 'They
haven't changed a bit'. Anxious parents had often said to the
headmistress, 'I do hope I won't find her changed when I come back...'
The headmistress snorted. Changed indeed! Of course not. Nothing
ever changed these young women from England and America. Provincial they
were, and provincial they remained, while their friends and relatives
gave thanks for their safe return from that immoral, retrogressive,
unenlightened and dangerous place, Europe.

Mrs. Shaunessy, mother of poor, homesick little Cay, had remarked of the
Cummings-Gordons, 'Such wholesome girls... I'm so glad you have that
type in the school.' The word 'wholesome' implies a richness and
validity which the two sisters from Philadelphia did not possess, but
Mrs. Shaunessy was too shaken by her encounter with Natalia... who
had come to Cay's room to find out if Cay's mother would like tea, or if
there was anything else she could do for her... to make nice
distinctions. Natalia had, of course, been followed by the silent and
equally Oriental Aime, Aime by Maria-Teresa Tucci, and Maria-Teresa by
Yasha, and Yasha by Theodora. The four of them were like nothing Mrs.
Shaunessy had ever encountered in Seattle, and Theodora was merely
another vulgar Jewess, which alone explained her relief on sighting the
Cummings-Gordon girls.

Their bedroom was garnished with silk pillows... they were
relentlessly feminine... a Harvard pennant, and two French dolls
which they thought daring. They were inoffensive, obedient, and from an
academic point of view, fairly intelligent. Therefore, thought the
headmistress irritably, she ought to like them. They were obviously
ideal pupils for a tired headmistress. Pensionnat Les Ormes, inhabited
entirely by Cummings-Gordons, would have run itself. She could have
rested, assured that there would be no emotional outbursts, no stealing,
no problems, no hope on the other hand of getting anywhere so far as the
international aspect of the school was concerned, and could have
returned to her analysis of democracy in Italy, France, Germany and
Switzerland.

It was really bad enough having Mlle Dupraix at the other end of the
table where she could not avoid looking at her and hearing her
incessantly intelligent and improving conversation... which was
always devoted to cultural subjects. The headmistress suspected that
Mlle Dupraix did it deliberately, remembering her unkind question, 'Tell
me, what is Beaux Arts? Or should I say what _are_ Beaux Arts?' She was
evidently determined to spend the balance of her life proving to the
headmistress that even if _she_ were uncultivated, Rose Dupraix was not.
At this moment, the Beaux Arts mistress was involved in a description of
Mont St. Michel. Despite her florid adjectives, the great architectural
marvel rising from its salt marshes appeared like the waiting-room of a
small Swiss railway station. The woman seemed to possess the peculiar
ability to make every subject stuffy. What a terrible misfortune,
thought Amlie Tourain. If our bodies have an individual odour which
enables dogs to distinguish between human beings, our minds also possess
an individual quality which flavours every subject we touch upon. Some
people are boring because they are bored. Others may be equally
egotistical, but there is sufficient vitality and life in their
self-engrossment to offset it. Probably it depended on the size of the
ego. Mlle Dupraix's ego was not on a large enough scale, apparently, and
besides that... remembering the analogous physical odour... the
personality of her mind was so obtrusive and penetrating that it
affected every subject _she_ touched upon for the worse.

She was too tired to think very coherently, she found. Back came her
mind to the Cummings-Gordons... really, it _was_ bad enough having
Mlle Dupraix as a permanent fixture at the foot of her table, without
adding them as well. She would not have minded them so much if they had
not been so well brought-up that they felt it their duty to make polite
conversation. Parents, thought Amlie Tourain grimly, should take stock
of their children's minds before they teach them that silence at meals
is not golden, but inconsiderate and bad-mannered. The Cummings-Gordons
had probably been informed from their earliest infancy that one goes
through certain meaningless actions and makes interminable meaningless
conversation that the wheels of society may turn more smoothly. Such
people should have more respect for the human mind and less for
convention, she thought, almost slamming her water down on the table.
Here were these girls destined to go through life disturbing the few
intelligent people they met... disturbing their efforts to think,
rather... by talking about coming-out parties, wedding-presents and
showers, and in another few years, by talking about babies, golf-clubs
and dinner-parties. Eventually, when they grew old, they would indulge
in a great deal of malicious gossip and encourage all that was
reactionary and narrow in their community, because, the dinner-parties,
babies and golf-clubs now being ruled out by age, they would have
nothing better to do.

Her excessive irritability startled even herself. She kept glancing
impatiently about the room, watching for that blessed moment when the
last spoon would be laid down, and she would be able to escape to her
study. This behaviour was unlike her. Until now she had always been able
to retain a certain amount of detachment. At the moment, in spite of
herself, everything got on her nerves; instead of seeing individual
problems in their relation to the whole, each person, her foibles and
her eccentricities, was becoming her personal concern and she was
ceasing to view anything in its proper perspective. That was because,
with the loss of her detachment, she had the distorted view of one who
looks from too near at hand. Sometime this afternoon her mind had
emerged from its comfortable cocoon into a confused, noisy and silly
microcosm which had no connection with anything but itself. She had
almost, during the staff-meeting a few hours before, brought herself to
a point where she could visualize Amlie Tourain, head of Pensionnat Les
Ormes, as a person who was indirectly, and to a small, though very real
extent, influencing the world. She had since lost that vision
completely, and was asking herself all over again what possible reason
she had for being where she was, except her loyalty to an idealistic
woman who lay ill with cancer across the lake at Evian.

She looked about the room again. There's Lotta... she's always the
last, and she's finished now, so I can go... No, there's Truda,
choosing this moment to ask for a second helping.

'Don't wait so long next time, Truda,' she said.

'No, Mademoiselle,' said Truda dutifully, from Miss Williams's table.

She resigned herself to further delay. It seemed literally an hour since
she herself had finished; what was going to happen to her if she
continued in this way? I suppose no one can help making other people the
victims of one's moods occasionally, she thought, but I have no right to
be here at all if I cannot rely on my judgment... the judgment of my
brain balanced by my emotions, not unbalanced by them.

'Are you looking forward to going to Gstaad, Helen?' she asked the
Cummings-Gordon on her left, as though in penance for her neglect of the
past few minutes, and then did not listen to the reply. If only Jeanne
comes back in the spring, if only I _knew_ that Jeanne would be back
then, I could really take hold of myself and make a good job of this.

Truda was through at last.

Amlie Tourain stood up and sailed out of the room, her brown hair
streaked with grey piled high on the top of her head, that curious walk,
which was a relic of the nineteenth century and the tradition that
ladies do not swing their arms, carrying her into her study where, a few
moments later, she was joined by her staff.

2

The girls' living-room, where everyone but the bed-ridden Rosalie, and
Vicky Morrison, gathered after dinner, was a large room with windows on
two sides, the north and east. The west wall was broken by the door
which led to the hall, and the south by double doors which folded back
and led into the main classroom. These were now pulled shut with a couch
in front of them, on which Ilse and Anna were sitting in obvious
isolation from the other Germans, six or seven of whom were gathered
around Truda, farther down the wall on their left. The room contained a
few glassed-in bookcases, with bits of statuary placed at intervals
along the top of them, several large urns filled with artificial
flowers, and far too many tables and chairs which, however, could not be
eliminated, as the room had to seat fifty people each evening. The
confusion was heightened by dull, flowered wall-paper and heavy dark red
velvet curtains at each of the long windows, as well as by an odd
assortment of mauve antimacassars on the red and brown
velvet-upholstered chairs. 'All it needs,' Theodora had remarked on
first seeing the room, 'is a few lithographs of defunct Tourains and
Dupraix, and two or three stuffed birds under glass.'

She was now sitting with Consuelo, Elsa and Christina, in her usual
position, with her long legs over the arm of the chair, picking
distastefully at the antimacassar by her left shoulder. 'I gave Belle
two francs for taking the tray to Vick,' she remarked.

Elsa said, without looking up from her sketching, 'That was rather a
lot.' She was sitting in a low chair trying to sketch the group in the
opposite corner composed of the Cummings-Gordons, their English
counterparts, the Anderson sisters from Manchester, Ida Samuels,
Henriette Martin, and Rose Budet. She was doing badly, because her view
was obscured by half a dozen intervening heads and shoulders, as well as
by tables and chairs. She kept leaning far out to the right, then far
out to the left, trying to see them better.

'What _are_ you doing, Elsa?' asked Consuelo. 'Trying to do reducing
exercises in a sitting position?'

'I'm trying to see them properly,' she said. In defiance of Mlle
Tourain's expressed wish that the girls change for dinner, she was
wearing a dark blue tweed skirt and yellow sweater which had become
separated as a result of her contortions.

'Do yourself up, woman,' said Theodora. 'Or pull yourself together,
rather. You're coming apart.'

'Sorry,' she said hastily, and jerked down her sweater. The other three
were wearing silk dresses, Consuelo in blue which matched her eyes and
set off her fair hair and pale skin to such advantage that Theodora
glanced at her admiringly from time to time; Christina in green, intent
as usual upon her knitting, and Theodora in brown silk _crpe_ which was
extremely simple but for a large tie of gilt rope round her neck, which
made her hair appear a more improbable shade of red than ever.

'Look at the Manchester-Philadelphia sister-acts,' said Theodora,
yawning. 'Isn't it wonderful how we women can sink our differences as
soon as we start talking about clothes?'

'How do you know that's what they're talking about?' asked Consuelo.

'Have you ever known them to talk about anything else?'

'Yes. Men, actors and actresses, the social life of their respective
cities, and who's-the-best-looking-girl-in-the-school?'

'Maybe I'm wrong then.'

'Do you like women, Ted?' asked Elsa.

'Not much,' she said frankly.

'Why not?'

'They're raised for men and marriage, so they're not interested in
anything else much. If they are, they're conscious of it. I mean the
woman who's genuinely intellectual, having been brought up, maybe just
unconsciously but still brought up, to regard marriage as the ultimate
goal, is usually rather defiant about it.'

'Defiant?' repeated Elsa.

'Yes. I mean she makes a parade of her difference... runs around in
collars and ties... mentally speaking, if not actually... and
makes a song and dance about being different. When the average woman
says something intelligent, she always gives me the feeling that she
read it somewhere the night before. I don't think we're naturally less
intelligent than men, but everything the average woman says and does
outside the home or not connected with domestic things in any way, is
bound to be second-rate because that's not her main preoccupation.'

'Yet you haven't anything you want to do, particularly,' said Elsa.

'What do you mean?'

'You've got to include yourself in the "average woman" group then.'

'But I don't want to marry either,' said Theodora. 'That lets me out of
both classes.'

'Don't you like men?'

'No. Men,' said Theodora, 'are idiots.'

'How do you know?' asked Consuelo.

'Excepting your brother Juan,' she added hastily.

Consuelo looked at her, and said firmly, 'Now see here, Teddy... I've
got enough to do looking after Marian and trying to get her out of bed
once and for all, without worrying about you and Juan...'

'You don't have to worry about me and Juan.'

'I know I don't have to. It's purely voluntary. I like you both, and I'd
hate to see either of you...'

'Taisez-vous,' said Theodora. 'There are a couple of sweet young
Scandinavians present. Less of your nasty South American realism.' She
was keeping an eye on Truda, as she had promised Mary Ellerton, and so
far, during the half-hour which had elapsed since dinner, her behaviour
had been exemplary. Truda was sitting on a small table by the door, six
or eight feet from Ilse and Anna on the couch, talking to her group of
sycophants. At that moment, as Theodora glanced across the room at her
once more, she saw Truda dart a quick look down the wall at Ilse and
Anna, then she said something in German which Theodora could not catch.
It was evidently something disagreeable, for she noticed that Ilse
stiffened. She remarked vaguely to Consuelo, 'I suppose he'll be back
from Paris to-morr...' and stopped, pulling her body forward and
upward by one hand on Consuelo's chair. She had heard Truda say, 'Ilse
will be made into a good German when we get the Saar... even if she
doesn't think so. Lots of other Jews don't think so either... but
they learn,' and had seen Anna look up angrily.

Then again, Truda's deliberate voice saying, 'Why, didn't you know she's
engaged? That's why she's been collecting... er... her dowry from
us...'

Theodora got to her feet with surprising speed. The others dropped their
knitting and sketching; the group on the floor behind them, Natalia,
Aime, Stephania, Maria-Teresa and Yasha, fell into silence, then the
girls in the other corner. The knowledge that something was in the air,
that something exciting was going to happen travelled from group to
group and from person to person until the whole room was still, everyone
watching the girls by the door.

Truda slid down from her table as Anna got up from the couch saying
furiously, 'You shut up, Truda. You've done enough damage. You're
disgracing every German girl in the school.'

Little Klaus across the room startled everyone by saying quite clearly,
'Yes, that is true. People will think German girls are not kind...'
then stopped, looking embarrassed and a little frightened.

The two by the couch standing facing each other did not hear the gentle
little voice. Truda said, her voice hard and vindictive, 'If you want to
talk about Germans and being German... what kind of citizen do you
consider yourself? Do you think you and your precious father make good
Germans?'

Anna went white. She tried to speak, tried to control the trembling of
her body, and struggled to control her voice. At last she asked, against
her will, 'What do you mean by that?' wishing that some vestige of her
former strength would return to her so that she could deal with Truda
unemotionally, and with the dignity which was so necessary to her. Was
it the fever which made her so weak, and made her feel so sick?

'I'm talking about your father,' said Truda. 'I'd like to know what he
does for the government, and so would everyone else. He seems to be
rather mysterious. Last week my _Zeitung_ reported that the police
wanted to get some information from him, but he'd disappeared. Where is
he, exactly... and _what_ is he?'

'You... you...' Anna put her hand up to her face, too shaken with
fear to be able to think, to be able to think even of a lie. 'Leave...
him... out of this...' Her voice had broken in the middle, which
increased her terror, for she was as much unnerved by her own loss
of self-control as she was by Truda's determination to trap her.

They had dropped into German, which few of the girls understood, but the
room was still silent. They might not know what was being said, but the
sight of Anna, usually so quiet and contained, utterly upset and almost
in tears, held their attention.

Theodora, who included German among her many languages, walked over to
the couch and got between them. Truda was still looking stonily at Anna,
who began to sob. Theodora said coldly, 'Stop this, Truda. You're making
a fool of yourself...'

Truda said nothing, put out one hand and with a single vicious thrust
sent Theodora reeling back until she fell against the nearest table.
Caught in a sudden panic, the Jewish girl from St. Louis turned and
yelled in Consuelo's direction, 'Con, for God's sake get Vicky!'

Consuelo, she discovered a moment later, had already gone. Theodora,
hearing her footsteps racing up the wooden stairs by the door, two steps
at a time, looked wildly round the room at the gaping school and asked
herself, 'Why in hell do forty people have to stand in the background
like a bunch of cows, even if they don't understand German? Can't they
see Anna's going to scream in a minute? If I could get some co-operation
I could stop this...'

Truda was saying, 'I don't see why I should leave you out of this...
or your father either. Unless you want to talk about Ilse?'

'No... no, you know perfectly well I don't.'

'You brought it up by saying something about being German.' Her face was
disfigured by an emotion which was compounded of anger, shame, a
determination to see Anna get what she deserved, and righteous
indignation. She thought of the letter she would write her father,
giving the information about Graf von Landenburg which was so badly
wanted, and went on relentlessly, 'I shouldn't think your father would
call himself a German... he's more of an... internationalist,
isn't he?'

Anna was too terrified to take any possible alley leading in another
direction, obsessed by the one desire to shield her father. She repeated
in her broken voice, 'Leave him out of this!'

'Why?'

'Because it's none of your business!'

'Isn't it?'

'No, and I'm not going to stand here letting you make your horrible
insinuations just because you're never really happy unless you're making
someone else miserable...' Her voice gave way again. She put out one
hand unseeingly toward the couch, trying to get hold of some solid
object to lend her support, but the couch was too far away and her hand
closed helplessly on air. It had the effect of further unnerving her,
like a tired swimmer who feels for bottom while he is still beyond his
depth, and increased her feeling of isolation. She thought that the
whole expectant school behind her was waiting and hoping to see her go
under.

'What does he do? And where is he, if I may ask?'

'He's... he's...'

'Where is he?'

'I don't know!'

'You got a letter from him yesterday, postmarked Zrich. He could hardly
be in Switzerland, could he? Not if the whole country's looking for him.
They'd know if he'd got over the border...'

'They... might not...'

'Oh, yes they would.'

Anna shook her head again, unable to take her eyes from Truda's. They
were green, compelling her to look into their depths. 'He's... in
Zrich. Yes... yes, that's where he is...'

'Oh, no he isn't,' she said derisively. 'They'd know if he were. Well,
come on, Anna... if he's not doing something he shouldn't be doing,
what are you hesitating for?'

'I'm not hesitating...' she said, her body and face convulsed by
sobs.

'Where is he then? And what's he doing?'

She swallowed in a last desperate effort, then her self-control gave
way, after the weeks and months of strain and worry. 'All right,' she
said, 'I'll tell you... I don't care if the whole world knows it!
What chance have we got anyway? Everyone's against us... I'll tell
you, I'll tell you... he's in... he's in...'

'Knigsberg,' said Vicky from the doorway. 'And he keeps chickens.' Her
voice was pitched low as usual, yet the absurd words carried to the far
corners of the room. She seemed as she crossed the room, small and
slender as she was, to dwarf both Truda and Anna, to relegate them once
more to their own places in a group of forty-five. 'Really, Truda. What
you need more than anything else is a rattle and a good spanking. Leave
poor Anna alone, for heaven's sake... she's got enough to worry about
with a brother who's not strong and a father who's more interested in
the welfare of the German Jews than your Adolf likes. But you can't have
him arrested for that, can you? Or for keeping chickens.' She looked
rather curiously at Truda and Anna, then at the gaping school which had
begun to relax once more and was staring at her with some amusement. Her
eyes fell on Theodora who had collapsed into a chair and was fanning
herself with relief, and a smile flickered across her face.

She pushed Anna gently so that she sat down on the couch, then turned to
Truda and went on quietly, 'She could have told you that weeks ago, but
you've all scared her so with your tales of firing-squads and
concentration camps that she began to believe her father's Jewish
charities were really a criminal offence... besides, she's ill,' she
added, still looking intently at the discomfited German girl, her
disturbing grey eyes searching Truda's face for the reason behind all
this. It was by character and the nature of her personality that Vicky
dominated those about her, rather than through any desire of her own.
She thought, really, I have the most unfortunate talent for transferring
attention to myself, then remembered Consuelo's breathless remark as
they rushed downstairs, 'She's been simply beastly to Ilse too...
accusing her of stealing money for her dowry.'

'You'd better apologize to both Ilse and Anna,' said Vicky. 'And leave
them alone after this. If you _must_ scrap with someone, scrap with
Consuelo, or Elsa, or me. We don't mind it at all.'

Her intent, unemotional look had its effect. Truda bit her lip for a
moment, then gave in. 'All right,' she said loudly. 'I'm sorry,' then
turned, ran across the room and out the door.

Vicky said, 'Anna, brace up. You too, Ilse,' for the little Saarlander
had forgotten all about Paul and the garden now, and was crying with her
head buried in the sofa cushions. A moment later Vicky heard a door open
and said dismally in English, 'Oh, lord, now I'm for it. Here comes the
Light Brigade', and sank down wearily in the centre of the sofa with
Anna on her right and Ilse on her left.

'Sit down, everyone!' snapped Theodora as the footsteps approached the
living-room door. When Mlle Tourain entered at the head of her staff
they were all in their accustomed places, except Vicky, who should have
been upstairs playing her piano, and who, as Theodora remarked
disgustedly to Theodora, 'stuck out like a sore thumb', with a
tear-stained girl on either side of her.

The headmistress caught sight of Vicky when she was half-way across the
room, and stopped. 'What are you doing here?' she demanded.

Vicky stood up. 'I came down to try and get Anna to go to bed, Mlle
Tourain.'

'Why?'

'She's not very well... she's been feeling ill for the past week...'

'Is that true, Anna?' asked the headmistress, turning to look at the
Bavarian girl, who also stood up.

'Yes, Mlle Tourain.'

'Why didn't you report to Mlle Dupraix?'

'I... I... didn't want to be sent to bed...' She had not yet
recovered her self-possession, and was twisting a handkerchief through
her fingers and biting her lip to steady it.

'Why not?'

'Because I...' She stopped, looking helplessly at the headmistress,
who went over to her own table and sat down, while the rest of the staff
scattered to their chairs in various parts of the room.

In the brief silence came Theodora's voice saying brightly in French,
'And when she told me that, I said "Josephine! How can you be so
unmannerly and so ungracious? Give him your canary if he wants it..."'

'Theodora!'

'Pardon, Mademoiselle.'

'Well, Anna?'

Vicky glanced at the Bavarian girl beside her, and said quickly, 'Mlle
Tourain, this is entirely my fault. I got rather bored upstairs alone,
and Anna provided a good excuse for... coming down, and...'

'That's enough, Vicky. Go to bed, Anna, and I'll send Dr. Laurent in to
have a look at you to-morrow morning. You, Ilse, go upstairs and wash
your face. You'd better go to bed after that, too.' She saw Vicky's
worried eyes follow them to the door; apparently that girl's genius for
self-obliteration was once more manifesting itself. She was constantly
placing herself in a position where one could not avoid feeling that one
was battling windmills. Her mind remained concentrated on other people
even when she herself was bearing the brunt of an attack. 'We come to
you, Vicky. But first of all, where is Truda?'

'She had a headache, Mademoiselle.'

'My entire school seems to be suffering from one ailment or another.
Doesn't it?'

'Yes, Mlle Tourain.'

'You'd better return to your piano. At least you're not in mischief
then.' And as Vicky reached the door, 'Your lies are not at all
convincing. You must try to do better next time.' Then, as the door
closed quietly behind her, Mlle Tourain said abruptly, addressing the
whole room, 'If we have another incident of this sort, I'll expel every
girl connected with it', and getting up, went out the door and down the
hall to her study, where she sat still until long after midnight, angry
with herself and still more angry with Vicky, who had of course been
responsible for her undignified position.

In the living-room, Mary Ellerton joined Theodora and Consuelo on the
couch. Theodora was saying furiously, 'It takes brains to make so many
mistakes! Unless she's feeble-minded. Why in hell didn't she let Vick
alone? She might have known she wouldn't get anywhere. But she never
learns, our little Amlia, she never learns.'

Mary leaned back and closed her eyes wearily. 'Why does it have to be
Vicky all the time? She certainly can't last much longer at this rate.'

Later Theodora and Consuelo went to her room, but she was not there. She
was not with Anna either, she had just left. They finally found her in
the art room on the third floor, surrounded by the pale busts of Roman
emperors, and long drawing-tables, playing Chopin on the school's one
grand piano. She glanced up and smiled at them as they came in, but
still looked rather absentminded.

Theodora hauled herself up on the piano and sat swinging her legs in
silence for a few moments. Then at last she burst out, 'Do you know how
mad Mlle Tourain is at you now?'

'I can guess.'

'She's liable to think up a good reason for kicking you out, if you're
not careful.'

She stopped playing and looked up. 'Yes... I suppose she might. I do
make an idiot of myself, don't I?'

'I shouldn't have fetched you,' said Consuelo from the window. 'Then you
wouldn't have been dragged into it.'

'No,' said Vicky. 'But Anna was cracking by the time I got there.'

'What _is_ her father? And where is he?' demanded Theodora.

'Et tu, Brute?'

'Just vulgar curiosity,' said Theodora lightly.

'Oh... he's in a dangerous business, that's all.' She began to play
'Au Clair de la Lune' with one finger. 'Poor Anna. Poor Truda... poor
Ilse, for that matter.'

'Poor you,' said Theodora.

'I'm all right.'

'Yeah, so it would seem.'

Vicky looked up at her anxious face, and said affectionately, 'You're
very nice to worry about me, Teddy.' She smiled, then got up and joined
Consuelo by the window, looking over a white and silent world toward
Italy. Her eyes still seemed to be searching for something, as she said,
'Funny... I'm the one person here who really likes it, and who really
wants to stay...'

Theodora had crossed the room and was standing beside her. The three of
them looked out in silence. She said at last, 'It's not your fault,
anyway.'

'Oh, yes it is. I haven't been victimized by anyone, and I'm not abused.
Well, come along you two. We're supposed to be getting ready for bed.'
They started toward the door, arm-in-arm, Vicky remarking with a return
to her habitual, half-ironical humour, 'Just think, all over Lausanne,
in fifty international schools, boys and girls are now preparing for
bed. Now isn't that an inspiring thought?'

'No,' said Theodora.




PART TWO
FRIDAY




CHAPTER V


1

The snow for which everyone at Pensionnat Les Ormes had been waiting,
began to fall shortly before dawn. The whole external world was obscured
by a dense white curtain so that the school was like a ship at sea, a
seemingly frail human structure lonely and isolated from the invisible
world beyond its windows. Vicky, pausing as she dressed, to look out,
thought she discerned the outlines of the neighbouring insane asylum,
and stayed to watch until an unmistakable section of white roof bordered
with red tiles and eave troughs appeared momentarily, then was lost once
more behind the impenetrable white curtain.

She was a little late for breakfast. Frulein Lange glanced at her with
the required disapproval and murmured almost inaudibly, 'You're not very
punctual, Vicky.'

She nodded, and sighed an apology. 'Yes,' she said, sitting down, 'I'm
sorry. I'm always a little late for everything. I don't know why it is,
and it's discouraging. I get up early... I rush... and then I'm
late.' She scanned Frulein Lange's face anxiously, wondering whether
Mlle Tourain had given her permission to go home that week-end or not.
Frulein Lange had said that she was going to stay behind after the
staff-meeting and arrange it. From her long, thin profile Vicky could
gather nothing, however, except that the German mistress was making an
effort to appear more cheerful than she felt, this morning. Vicky picked
up the jug of _caf au lait_ and filled her cup absently, her eyes still
wandering in Frulein Lange's direction.

'Jam?' suggested Theodora beside her.

'Thanks,' she said, looking into the china pot. 'Is it apricot?'

'Isn't it always apricot?'

'No,' said Vicky. 'On All Saints' Day we had strawberry.'

'Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have established any precedent,' said
Theodora. 'But for that one moment of weakness, Dupraix remains
obstinately determined to feed us apricot and nothing but apricot.'

'Do you want some bread?' asked Yasha from across the table. Without
waiting for an answer she stretched forward and deposited two slices on
Vicky's plate, remarking in reply to Frulein Lange's rebuke, 'Vicky
doesn't eat unless you make her', in the semi-indifferent tone which
characterized most of her utterances.

'Butter?' said Maria-Teresa who was occupying the foot of the table.
'Please allow me.' She got up, snatched the plate of butter from under
Natalia's nose, rushed round the table with it and was back in her place
again before Frulein Lange could voice any objection. 'It's so nice not
having to start the day with Mlle Tourain in the room,' she observed. 'I
think she's quite right to take breakfast in bed... or wherever she
does take it.'

Theodora said with annoyance, 'I thought we had crescent rolls on
Fridays... in fact I _know_ we do. Now, we start getting bread.
What's this school coming to? On Wednesday we had custard instead of our
usual ice-cream, and last night we had strawberry cream instead of
custard. This uncertainty is bad for our nerves, and besides that, up
till now I've always been able to tell what day of the week it was by
the menu. I resent these... these innovations.'

Natalia said, looking amused, 'The irregularity doesn't stop with
custard, ice-cream and crescent rolls. There's a notice on the board
saying that we're to have our woollen drawers inspection this morning
after assembly, instead of to-morrow morning.'

'Oh, Lord!' said Theodora in disgust. 'That puts the pants on it,' she
added in English, and having delivered herself of an appropriate pun she
looked quite good-humoured again.

Frulein Lange frowned for a moment, then got it. She gave one of her
rare laughs, and then helped herself to some bread which, she told
herself a moment later, she could not possibly swallow without choking
on it.

Yasha said, 'I don't see why Mlle Tourain won't believe we're wearing
woollen drawers without making us march by her and lift our skirts to
prove it. We're not six years old.'

Mary Ellerton at the next table leaned over and touched Natalia's arm.
'Tell Vicky I want to speak to her a minute,' she said.

'Vicky,' said Natalia, 'Miss Ellerton wants you.'

Vicky got up, squeezed herself past Theodora and Anahide and said
cheerfully, 'Hello, how are you this morning, Miss Ellerton?'

'I'm very well, thanks. How are you?'

'As usual. Each day I give thanks for my continuing good health, and I
cannot but think that my constant appreci...'

'Do be quiet, Vicky,' she said. 'Look here, I want to see you sometime
to-day... before lunch, if possible.'

'All right,' she said, nodding. 'I'm free from eleven on. I'm supposed
to be practising in the art room, so let's meet there. What's the
matter, Mary? Anything wrong?'

'No... nothing special, except that Mlle Tourain is going to take
your head off, if she can think of a good reason. I've just seen her.
She looks as though she's been up all night.' She hesitated a moment,
then went on casually, 'I'd go and see her, if I were you.'

'What for?'

'To explain about last night.'

'Explain what?'

'The... the whole thing.'

'My dear Mary, she knew perfectly well Truda had been bothering Ilse and
Anna. What good would it do for me to go and say that, if I felt like
going and saying that, which I don't?'

'I didn't mean Truda and Ilse... I meant... Anna.'

'Anna?'

'Yes. Don't be so obtuse, Vicky. You know perfectly well what I'm
talking about.'

'If she wants information about Anna, she can go to her for it. Then she
won't be in the dark any longer.'

'It isn't that. She doesn't mind Anna knowing things she's not willing
to talk about... it's that she can't stand _your_ knowing them.' Mary
glanced up at the pale shadowed face above her, then down at her plate.
Vicky's tone was impatient, but the expression in her grey eyes was
impersonal as usual and therefore, thought Mary, who knew Vicky very
well, she would accomplish nothing by further argument. In spite of that
knowledge, however, she said matter-of-factly, 'I really advise you to
try and straighten it out.'

Vicky shook her head again, tracing the long crease in the tablecloth
with her eyes. She said nothing for a moment, then, 'She made a fool of
herself last night', with more annoyance than Mary had ever heard in her
voice before. 'She should either have ignored everything, or have taken
it for granted that _we_ knew she knew, and therefore there was no need
for her to establish her authority by having it out with me. She must
have realized that I wasn't going to tell tales, and she shouldn't have
needed the satisfaction of a public discussion in order to keep her
dignity. She'd have kept _more_ dignity if she'd paid no attention.' She
frowned doubtfully, then her eyes came back to Mary's upturned, anxious
face and remained there. 'It isn't only that, of course,' she said
shrewdly. 'She's using me as a focusing-point for her various
uncertainties... she thinks, if only I could get rid of that girl,
then I'd know where I was. Everyone does that... I mean they
concentrate on one obstacle, and use it as an excuse.' She stopped and
laughed. 'I sound as though I'm suffering from delusions of importance
or something...'

Mary let out a long breath, and taking a piece of bread, began to butter
it absently. 'No,' she said in a tone of discouragement. 'You're right,
that's the trouble. All the same, I do think it's time you opened up
about a lot of things. You can't expect...'

'I expect nothing,' she said quickly, withdrawing into herself again.
'It's my own fault.' She was aware of Cay and the others at Mary's table
studiously not listening, and a smile flickered across her face.

'It's not your fault!' said Mary impatiently. She glanced at her
mediocrities, then dropped her voice until it was scarcely more than a
whisper, saying with quiet intensity, 'Vicky, you're going to be asked
to leave if this goes on. One simply can't have a pupil who knows twice
as much as the staff!'

'All I did was to arrive at the right moment. Anyone else could have
done it... except Ted, poor lamb, who was the only one who was really
trying, and of course being Jewish, Truda wouldn't pay any attention to
her. Consuelo or Elsa or Christina might have stopped it, but none of
them speak German, so they hadn't the faintest idea what Truda was
saying. And she... Truda, I mean... was too worked up to let
anyone stop her just on the general principle that rows aren't very
pleasant. Well, supposing I do go and tell Mlle Tourain all that...
there's nothing to be gained by it. She doesn't want me in there
elaborating my own ideas, keeping back what she no doubt regards as the
essential piece of information... what Anna's father actually does,
and where he is... and I'm certainly not going to tell her that!
What's she trying to do? Turn me into a stool-pigeon?'

'Yes,' said Mary. 'I'm not so sure that she isn't right... at any
rate so far as Rosalie is concerned,' she added deliberately.

'Rosalie!'

'Yes. She said yesterday to me, after the staff-meeting, that she was
afraid to leave her alone up there much longer. She knows Rosalie's
suffering some kind of mental agony but she doesn't know what it is. She
thinks you do.'

'Oh. I see. As a matter of fact I thought I'd try and see Dr. Laurent
this morning. There's some talk of moving her to the Catholic hospital.'

'Is she worse?'

'Yes... I think so. Last night during dinner and afterwards I was in
there for an hour or so. She... she frightens me a little now. I
don't think she should be moved into a Catholic environment if it can
possibly be helped.'

'But she _is_ Catholic!'

'I know. That's the reason.'

'Are you mad, Vicky?' asked Mary helplessly.

She shook her head, smiling, then said, 'You're probably right; I
_shall_ be kicked out. If I am, someone has to be left behind who really
knows Rosalie... I think perhaps... I'd better... open up, as
you say. Not to Mlle Tourain, though. To you. Leave Anna's affairs alone
for a while. I'm afraid it won't be necessary to keep quiet about Graf
von Landenburg for very long. She spoke unevenly, trying to summon
enough courage to face facts, for she did not want to leave, and she had
an ordinary human tendency not to recognize a possibility by providing
for it. 'I'll tell you something about Rosalie when we meet in the art
room at eleven. In the meantime, I'd better get back to my breakfast.'

Under cover of Natalia's and Yasha's discussion of Villon's poetry which
they were reading together, Vicky asked Frulein Lange a few minutes
later, 'Are you going to Zrich to-morrow to see your sister?'

She shook her head. Her face was hidden behind the cup which she held in
her right hand; her left was clenched in her lap. She saw Vicky's angry
look and smiling faintly, put her cup down. Her face was drawn and pale,
even her thick brown hair which was done up in a knot at the back of her
head seemed untidy and dull. She was usually a neat woman, given to
small lace collars and cuffs which were always immaculate, Vicky had
noticed, and she was troubled to observe that this morning they were
rather soiled. Frulein Lange said slowly, 'Mlle Tourain thought that
this was the wrong time to ask for special favours'.

'Favours,' repeated Vicky irritably. 'What sort of a favour is that?'
she demanded, than checked herself. It was certainly not going to do
Frulein Lange any good to hear her give vent to her opinions. 'It
doesn't seem to me to be so much to ask,' she remarked less emotionally.

'Mlle Tourain said... that with the stealing... and everyone so on
edge... that I should have to wait until my regular time, and that if
the atmosphere of the school hadn't improved by then, I'd be lucky if I
got away in six weeks. By six weeks Maria will be...'

'The baby will be just about born by then,' said Vicky matter of factly,
in order to help her out.

'Yes.'

'How about phoning?'

'It would just upset her, Vicky. Besides that, Adolf would resent my
interfering. He'd have resented my going there to-morrow, but if I'd
been able to, I should have accomplished something, so it wouldn't
matter.'

'Well...' Vicky shook her head helplessly. 'I'm sorry I've run out of
suggestions, Frulein. I wish I could think of something... I tell
you what you might do. You might describe your sister's symptoms to Dr.
Laurent when he comes this morning to see Anna, and find out if he
thinks there's anything wrong. It probably wouldn't be much help, but if
there _isn't_ anything wrong with her he'd set your mind at rest... a
little, anyhow.'

She nodded, but her face had not brightened very much. She was still
trying not to cry, and was coming so close to it in spite of her
struggle that she was almost grimacing. She went on unsteadily. 'What I
mind is that after... all these years... I should be treated like
a child trying to get out of its lessons.' That was the wrong thing to
say; once you put a thing into words it became twice as true and had
twice as much power to hurt. She raised her cup again with one red,
shaking hand and held it in front of her face.

Vicky, realizing that the one thing she did not want was for anyone to
notice or remark on her lack of composure, turned her head away quickly,
and said to Theodora on her right, 'Talk, Teddy. It doesn't matter what
you say, but talk.'

Theodora swallowed her bread and butter and said instantly, 'Of course
I, for one, wouldn't be found dead by the road-side, in a pair of
woollen drawers. I mean, is this the twentieth century or isn't it?
That's what I always say. So I keep my beastly bloomers in the
sound-chamber of my portable gramophone, and they're just as good at
deadening sound as they are in keeping out the cold... better, in
fact. Personally, I've never felt the need of extra warmth in those
regions. It's always the tip of my Grecian nose that freezes.'

'Your nose isn't Grecian,' said Maria-Teresa.

'There are a lot of noses in modern Athens that are much funnier,' she
said. 'I was not referring to the classical Greek, but the contemporary
Greek nose.'

'Well, go on about your drawers,' said Yasha, yawning. 'It's much too
fascinating a subject to be dropped in the middle like that.'

'I'm not wearing any now, if that's what you mean, as Mlle Tourain very
well knows. And how am I going to get into the damn things when they're
at present buried in the depths of my gramophone, and we're expected to
go straight from assembly to line up for the inspection?'

Frulein Lange had recovered her poise. She felt that she ought to
return favours, and after searching about in her mind for a moment she
said, rather more airily than was natural to her, 'If you found that you
had forgotten your handkerchief, I might excuse you now in order to get
it.'

'Thank you, Frulein.' She bowed, and got up. Half-way across the room
she stopped, turned and came back again. 'As a token of my appreciation
of your help in this crisis,' she said formally to the German mistress,
'you may have what is left of my apricot jam,' and wound her lazy way to
the door again.

In the hall she was held up by Belle, one of the little Swiss maids, who
was holding a telegram between the first and second fingers of her left
hand. She had only that month come down from the mountains, and her
experience of telegrams was confined to two visits to the cinema when
the heroine in each case had been informed by wire of the death of her
lover. Belle's expression was a mixture of anxiety and concern for Mlle
Thodore, and an intense desire to get this thing out of her hands, as
she said unhappily, 'It's for you, Mademoiselle. I hope he is not ill
or... or... Collect', she added uncertainly, not being any too sure
what the words meant. Mlle Thodore seemed to know, however, for she
fished down into her stocking for the chamois bag which contained the
funds with which she met her running expenses, and paid the boy at the
door, leaving Belle to flee into the kitchen and spend the next fifteen
minutes in melodramatic speculations with the cook.

Theodora's room was on the second floor, facing the lake. She ran up the
flight of stairs by the girls' living-room two steps at a time, and
rushed into her room, banging the door behind her as usual. Then she sat
down on the radiator and eyed the telegram with disfavour. It must be
from her brother Lewis because he was the only human being in the world
with the nerve to send her telegrams collect. He was supposed to be at
Juan-les-Pins, but was undoubtedly somewhere else, without funds with
which to get back to where he was supposed to be. That much was certain,
she thought with some pride, for he had never in his life remained where
he ought to be for longer than a few weeks, and he was always short of
money.

With the telegram still unopened, she got up and rescued her drawers
from the interior of her gramophone which sat casually on one end of her
overloaded dressing-table, then started the record. It was a very old
and worn record, but the entire suffering school was aware that
Theodora's affection for it was undimmed by either time or constant
repetition.

    St. Louis woman, with her diamond rings,
    Drags that man round, by her a-pron stri-ings.
    Now if it wasn't for that woman
    And her store-bought hair
    The one I love...
    Wouldn't be gone... so... far... from... here...

She put on her drawers and then ripped open the telegram, and above the
voice from the gramophone on her dressing-table could be heard her
pained, 'Oh, my gosh!' as she looked up in order to glare at a
photograph of her brother which, along with some aerial views of New
York and St. Louis, two night-club programmes and pictures of six
masculine movie stars, was decorating the opposite wall.

    I've got the St. Louis blues
    Just as blue as a gal can be,
    Now that man's got a heart
    Like a rock cast down in-to the sea
    Or else he wouldn't have gone so far from me...

She had been wrong about his whereabouts. He _was_ in Juan-les-Pins,
'with bells on, too,' she groaned. The telegram read:

            THEODORA COHEN
            PENSIONNAT LES ORMES
            LAUSANNE SUISSE
            TED CAN YOU POSSIBLY LEND ME FIVE HUNDRED
            FRANCS SWISS NOT FRENCH STOP AM BROKE BUT IN
            LOVE AT LAST SO IT DOESNT MATTER FOR THE TIME
            BEING STOP BREAK THE NEWS TO MOTHER IS SHE STILL
            MOPING OVER THAT GIGOLO AT THE MONTMARTRE
            QUESTION MARK HER NAME IS ANGELA SHES AN
            ACTRESS MAYBE YOUD BETTER NOT MENTION HER TO
            MOTHER ON SECOND THOUGHTS AND EXPECT THE
            FIVE HUNDRED IMMEDIATELY YOURS WITH THE
            JITTERS LEWIS

'Oh, my _gosh_!' she said again, this time with even greater emphasis
and distress. She glanced at her wrist-watch, observed that the time was
five minutes to nine, and hastily scribbled an answer on the pad of
telegram forms which she had thoughtfully removed from the Palace Hotel
three months before, for just such emergencies. She could get one of the
school staff to send it from the office in Place St. Franois during the
morning.

            LEWIS COHEN
            HOTEL BEAU SITE
            JUAN LES PINS FRANCE
            THEY ARE ALWAYS CALLED ANGELA HAS SHE A STARVING
            MOTHER AND TEN LITTLE SISTERS ANYWHERE I
            BET SHE HAS YOU POOR SAP STOP AM SENDING TWO
            HUNDRED AND FIFTY FRANCS AND NOT ANOTHER SOU
            UNLESS YOU COME UP HERE AND COLLECT IT YOURSELF
            AND DONT BRING YOUR ANGELA WITH YOU EITHER
            BECAUSE WE WOULDNT GET ALONG WELL TOGETHER
            STOP WHY WERE YOU EVER BORN ANYWAY YOU JIBBERING
            IDIOT YOUR LOVING SISTER THEODORA.

    Feeling to-morrow... li-ike Ah feel to-day
    Ah'll pack my trunk, an' make mah get-a-way
    Feeling to-morrow... li-ike Ah feel to-day.

She dashed out the door and down the stairs with the voice from the
gramophone following her and fell into her chair beside Vicky at
Frulein Lange's table as the clock on the wall struck nine. They were
in the corner between the French windows which faced the lake and the
glass doors leading out into the loggia on the east side of the
building. Directly above them on the wall was a large map of North
America which had been made in Germany and which fascinated Vicky
because, as she said, it made the United States look like a suburb of
Canada. At that moment, Mlle Tourain and Mlle Dupraix being engaged in
an argument on the other side of the room, Vicky was once more on the
subject of the map.

She was sitting half sideways in her chair looking up at it and
addressing herself vaguely to Theodora beside her. 'I suppose it was
made during the war,' she remarked. 'Germany had some idea of acquiring
Canada then, didn't it? So they made maps like this. I mean their
soldiers must have heard about the wealth and general desirability of
the United States, but not so much about Canada, so if they made Canada
five times the size of the U.S. then everyone would be encouraged to
fight for it. There are only... let me see...' She took a long
breath and pulled out an extraordinary assemblage of papers, pencils,
rulers, odds and ends from, the drawer in front of her, eyeing its
extreme untidiness with an expression which combined annoyance with a
certain fatalistic acceptance of life's unnecessary complications.
'There are only about eleven million inefficient Scots and French in
Canada, who presumably wouldn't object so much to being annexed as a
hundred and twenty million Americans.' She glanced at some papers and
went on, 'One is either born with the faculty for neatness and order, or
one isn't. I wasn't.'

'Do you imagine for one single minute that I'm listening to you?'
demanded Theodora. 'Because I'm not.'

'What good can it possibly do us to know what the inhabitants of
Bordeaux are called?' Consuelo across the table was asking Yasha on her
left with mild irritation. They were in the top class and since Mlle
Devaux's grammar curriculum was designed to cover two years, and these
girls had most inconveniently returned for a third, she was at her wits'
end to know what to do with them until she had hit on a plan by which
they memorized, among other things, long lists which began
'Nice--Niois', 'Lyon--Lyonnais', 'Auvergne--Auvergnat',
'Provence--Provenal'.

'It might be useful some time,' said Frulein Lange.

'Why?' demanded Consuelo.

'What's the word for a person who lives in Manchester, Frulein?' asked
Yasha.

'Manchester?' she repeated, looking perplexed. 'I don't think I've ever
heard it.'

'Neither have I,' said Vicky. 'What is it?'

'Mancunian,' said Yasha.

'Mancunian?' said Frulein Lange. 'What a peculiar word.'

'Did you ever need it during your three years in England, Frulein?'
asked Consuelo.

'No,' she admitted.

Consuelo yawned, and said, 'Then it ought to be possible for us to get
through life fairly easily without being able to identify the people of
Carcassonne.'

'Moi, j'ai vu Carcassonne,' remarked Yasha for no particular reason.
'Frquemment,' she added rather absently.

'How nice,' said Consuelo. 'I hope you enjoyed yourself.'

'Oh, yes, it was delightful.'

'Elsa,' said Theodora, 'is thinking of becoming a Taoist.'

'Why?' asked Frulein Lange in alarm.

'She intends to combine it with Christianity to see if it can be done,
and anyhow she says that she doubts if even Lausanne boasts a Taoist
temple, and therefore if, when Mlle Tourain wishes to dispatch her to a
church of her own denomination, she states loftily that she is a Taoist,
that will dispose of the question of how she is to spend her Sunday
mornings, and she can stay home and paint.'

On the other side of the room Mlle Tourain broke off in the middle of
what appeared to be an interminable discussion with Mlle Dupraix, and
stated with finality, 'Frulein Lange's class will meet in the art room
from ten to eleven.' Then raising her voice she said, looking from one
table to the next so that her glance included everyone in the room,
'There will be no classes to-morrow morning. Unless the girl who has
been stealing comes to me before noon to-day, I shall call in a city
detective to question you all individually at ten o'clock to-morrow.'

Vicky started at the word 'detective', and felt a wave of apprehension
pass over her. She had an instant picture of a Swiss policeman grilling
some of the younger girls... Ilse, Little Klaus, Cay Shaunessy, for
example... and wondered impatiently what had got into the
headmistress to give her such a dangerous idea. She looked idly about
the room in the silence following Mlle Tourain's remark until her eyes
fell on Ina Barren, her English room-mate, sitting at Mlle Devaux's
table in the opposite corner. Ina's normally rather vacant face was
drawn tight with terror, and Vicky stiffened so suddenly that the papers
fell off her lap on to the floor.

When she and Theodora had gathered them up she looked about the room
again and became aware that half the girls were staring at Ilse Brning,
sitting at Mlle Tourain's long table with her back to the folding doors
on the other side of which Truda and Anna had quarrelled the night
before. She had gone white, and was moistening her lips with her tongue
in a manner which was too plainly nervous to escape attention. An
increasing number of girls began to look at her, one by one, becoming
conscious of other glances in her direction, while Mlle Tourain and the
Beaux Arts mistress farther up the table by the door, continued to
disagree with one another, unaware of the growing tension.

Vicky watched Ilse, trying with one part of her mind to transmit some of
her own strength and self-control to the girl, while the rest of her
thoughts were in confusion. She blamed herself because she had not made
a greater effort to help Ilse, because she had not made a point of being
with her in view of the whole school and thereby back her up... Vicky
knew her own influence... and because, finally, she told herself
angrily, she had gone her own remote, self-centred way, when a little
extra consideration on her part would have made all the difference to
someone else. Who _had_ been looking after Ilse? Consuelo was fully
occupied with Marian Comstock, trying to persuade her to get up and
behave more rationally; Elsa never did anything but sketch, Mary
Ellerton was busy with her games, and with Cay Shaunessy, not to mention
a few others, while Theodora spent all her spare time trying to learn
'open christies', or 'stem turns', or whatever it was. Anna was too
worried herself to be able to do much for Ilse. The little Saarlander
had evidently been living all alone in an atmosphere of gossip and
suspicion from which she, Vicky, had deliberately withdrawn herself.

Ilse was sitting motionless now with her back to the folding-doors;
Vicky had the impression, watching her, that she was almost on the point
of making some sudden, hysterical sound in order to break the silence
which had fallen on the whole room except for that little area by the
door where the headmistress and Mlle Dupraix were still arguing. She
seemed to grow more tense and more rigid with every second that passed;
her hands were fastened to her Bible on the table in front of her and
her whole body was straining forward as her terrified brown eyes darted
from one face to the next. She was struggling to control herself, her
mouth trembling as her eyes wavered back and forth, back and forth,
searching the faces before her, some of which were accusing her, some
pitying her, some curious, and some merely staring because she looked so
strange.

The two voices by the door continued, low-pitched and persistent,
completely external to the intense quiet over the rest of the room which
seemed to the more sensitive ones to be rushing forward into some kind
of wild outburst from Ilse, who did not look as though she could hold on
for more than a few seconds longer. The teachers and the few girls with
sufficient courage and ingenuity to take things into their own hands and
divert some of the attention from Ilse to themselves, were powerless. So
long as the headmistress was in the room they could not speak unless she
spoke first to them.

There was the sound of a chair being shoved violently backward until it
fell, shattering the silence, against the wooden doors, and Ilse was on
her feet gasping, 'Stop it! Stop staring at me like that! I haven't done
anything... I haven't done anything!'

Vicky started up, only to be pulled roughly back into her chair by
Theodora who hissed imperatively, 'Stay where you are, you sap!'

Mlle Tourain and Mary Ellerton arrived at Ilse's side at the same
moment, the headmistress saying sharply, 'Ilse, control yourself!
Control yourself, I say!' Grasping the girl's shoulders she shook her
slightly, while Miss Ellerton stood helplessly beside them.

She seemed to have lost her breath entirely, until at last she gave a
long, shivering sob. Her eyes seemed to be searching the headmistress's
face for some sign of sympathy and understanding, but she could find
none. The little Saarlander's face took on a look of hopelessness as she
struggled to get her breath. It seemed to her that she was making a good
deal of noise every time she sobbed, but she could not stop crying.

Mlle Tourain remembered the treatment for hysterics. It did not include
gentleness, rather one was supposed to treat it by administering some
kind of shock. She did not want to slap Ilse's face, so she continued to
shake her, fighting down her impulse to take the poor child in her arms
and let her cry to her heart's content. A moment later Ilse broke away
from her and ran to the door where she stood for a minute trying to turn
the stiff handle, and then disappeared.

The headmistress stared blankly at the door through which Ilse had gone,
then went slowly back to her place at the head of the table. The staff
and the girls had become accustomed to unconventional behaviour from her
and thought that she was choosing this singularly inopportune moment to
fall into one of her abstracted moods. Actually, she was asking herself
with bitter self-reproach why it was that so many of her theories, put
into practice, ended in failure and in the conviction that she would
have done better to follow her instinct rather than something she had
read. Amlie Tourain had been away from the world so long that she had
forgotten how to deal with people, and she was afraid to rely on her
emotions. She was very still at the head of her table looking down at
the Bible before her, and indifferent as always to the fifty people who
sat in silence, waiting for her to give some sort of signal.

Her voice came to them at last, speaking in a monotone, 'Notre pre qui
es aux cieux, que ton nom soit sanctifi, que ton rgne vienne, que ta
volont soit faite sur la terre comme aux cieux'... They joined in
one by one... 'Donne-nous aujourd'hui notre pain quotidien;
pardonne-nous nos offenses comme aussi nous pardonnons  ceux qui nous
ont offenss; ne nous induis pas en tentation mais dlivre-nous du mal,
car c'est  toi appartiennent le regne, la puissance et la gloire,
Amen.'

A short silence, then she said, 'You will kindly collect your laundry at
twelve o'clock instead of leaving it here until sometime during the
afternoon. You may find the effect created by forty pairs of drawers
very pleasing; I, however, do not. I therefore ask you to spare me the
sight of your freshly laundered underwear, and request that you come
down and get it before lunch.' Amlie Tourain was herself again.

Belle's rosy face suddenly appeared looking nervously round the door.
'Come in, come in,' said the headmistress impatiently. 'Don't stand at
the door as though you thought I were going to eat you. What is it?'

Belle opened the door another six inches and said doubtfully, 'Dr.
Laurent is here, Mademoiselle,' as though she were not quite sure
whether or not her eyes had deceived her. She glanced quickly at the
headmistress and then retreated. How in the name of the Blessed Saints,
had even that old dragon Marthe managed to survive four years of Mlle
Tourain?

The headmistress rose, saying to Mlle Dupraix, 'Please inspect the
girls' clothing for me.' She turned and looked once more round the room.
'You,' she went on, addressing her pupils, 'will file by Mlle Dupraix
one by one, then make your beds and go to your classes at nine-thirty as
usual.' She swept out, and there was another noisy interlude while the
girls collected their pens, pencils and notebooks to the accompaniment
of a great many voices whispering, talking and laughing.

On hearing Dr. Laurent's name Vicky shook her head in answer to Mary's
inquiring look from across the room, and said to Theodora, 'Darn it, why
does he have to come so early? I thought I might be able to see him if
he came sometime after eleven or during the afternoon, but I've got
classes for the next two hours, so I can't. Why does he have to arrive
at the crack of dawn, anyhow?'

'He probably owes his success to early rising,' said Theodora. She cast
a despairing look around the table, then began wildly turning out the
contents of her drawer in search of her French grammar. 'Who was it
talked about the cursed something or other?'

'The cursed animosity of inanimate objects?' asked Vicky. 'Or inanimate
things, I forget. Carlyle, perhaps. Then again, perhaps not.'

'Probably. I was never taught more than enough to prevent me from being
illiterate. Anyway, I'll bet that lousy book is leering at me from under
this pile of stuff. Well, it can go on leering. I'm not going to wait
for it to come out any longer. I'll use yours.'

They started toward the door, Theodora still muttering imprecations
against her grammar, Vicky's mind occupied with Rosalie. Even if she had
been able to see Dr. Laurent, it was unlikely that he would be able to
do anything for Rosalie, and when it came to what she would say if she
did see him, Vicky realized that she would probably be quite unable to
tell him anything he had not guessed already. She had no wish to appear
a hysterical schoolgirl with a taste for melodrama, and no wish to
appear an alarmist. Mlle Tourain had written Garcenot pre to remove his
daughter, and nothing further could be done in any case until the
headmistress had heard from him, unless they seriously intended putting
her in the Catholic hospital.

She had come to know Rosalie's background a few weeks before Christmas
and the girl had seemed so much better after talking to someone, that
for a while Vicky had ceased to worry so much about her. During the past
week, however, she had had a mental relapse, and that unearthly quiet
had settled down on her again and she seemed to Vicky to be trying to
force herself by an extreme effort of will into another world. She was
trying to die. There were hours each day when she lay in bed without
moving, her eyes fixed on a reproduction of the head of Christ from the
'Last Supper', which Vicky had brought her from Milan.

Theodora was back on the subject of woollen drawers as they took their
places at the end of the line which began at Mlle Dupraix by the study
door and ended with Vicky and Theodora by the door of the classroom. 'It
always seems to me that there's something indecent about this
performance. What do you think?' she asked. 'Of course there are no
gentlemen present... unless you count Bill Wallingford,' she added.
'I shall always have a soft spot in my heart for Bill Wallingford. I can
never forget that it was she who brought us together. You remember our
first meeting, Vick?'

Vicky glanced at Theodora, then away through the open door of the
classroom to the windows facing the lake. 'I remember,' she said
shortly, 'though I prefer to forget. You never did have any tact.'

'Sorry. It's a long time since I've been able to take things seriously
enough.'

'Oh, don't worry. It _was_ awful, though, wasn't it? I remember I was
lying in bed reading by one candle when a movement of the light made me
look up to see the door opening inch by inch. I nearly screamed, for
some reason or other... I'm not usually very nervous. Then Bill's
face, distorted by the crazy light, appeared around the edge of the
door. I couldn't imagine what on earth she thought she was doing at that
time of night. She hadn't the expression of one paying a social call,
somehow or other. She just stared at me. I remembered the poor idiot had
taken a fancy to me and had been sort of following me about...
walking when I walked, playing basket-ball when I played basket-ball,
shopping when I shopped... but I didn't know anything about...
well, whatever you call that. She came and sat on the edge of my bed
while I stared back, paralysed with fear.'

'And then I came along, forming a rescue squad of one.'

She laughed, remembering Theodora's casual, 'May I join you, ladies?'
and the next queer fifteen minutes during which the three of them had
sat on the bed, Vicky almost weak with relief, Bill shaking as though
she had been brought too roughly out of a trance, and only Theodora,
calm and conversational as ever, her apparently unshakable
self-possession still with her.

Immediately after Bill left, Theodora had said coolly, 'I don't like
that woman's looks. I saw her pass my door and had a hunch she was up to
no good... I'm really unusually observant, Victoria... do people
call you Victoria, my poor child? They do? Well, sorry, I won't. Vicky,
or Vick for short from now on. Anyway, she passed my door but I hadn't
anything on at the time, so immediate pursuit was impossible. Sorry you
got such a scare.'

She had gone to Mlle Tourain the next day and expressed herself somewhat
too freely, so that the headmistress, incredulous and harassed, had
heard her out and then told her to go away and rid herself of such
ignoble and discreditable ideas.

Theodora had been devoted to Vicky ever since. She said thoughtfully as
the line began to move forward toward the door of Mlle Tourain's study,
'I wonder why it is that women are not supposed to be capable of
friendship and loyalty to such an extent as men? They're always pictured
like Kipling's cat, walking alone, when it comes right down to it, and
when they change their environment... I mean after they get married,
or fall in love with an unusual man or something, then their friendships
alter.'

'Shakespeare knew better,' said Vicky.

'I know, but he lived four hundred years ago and since then people have
forgotten. I guess it's because no one ever takes the trouble to find
out about us. It's so much easier to talk about men as people, and women
as women... lumping us all together, and referring to the female sex
as though it were an enigmatic and too, too baffling inanimate object.
We're supposed to be all alike underneath... men aren't, they're
permitted individuality, when we're not. We differ in degree, but not in
kind, apparently. I mean you're catty, but not so catty as Ida...'

'Why am I catty?' Vicky wanted to know.

'Because you're not a man, darling,' she said patiently. 'Also, being a
woman, you like gossip...'

'I don't like gossip,' said Vicky.

'Stop interrupting me. Men don't gossip, they're always logical, and
they never reason emotionally. Women do all of these things. "Oh, Mlle
Tourain, in our hours of ease, uncertain, coy and hard to please..."
You see?'

'No,' said Vicky. 'I don't see.'

'"Truda is the lesser man and all her passions, matched with mine, are
as moonlight unto sunlight and as water unto wine".'

'Oh, that's interesting.'

'Yes. Now, to misquote Beverley Nichols, "It is precisely because I
adore and reverence Mlle Dupraix..."'

'What's the rest of it?'

'It's because he adores and reverences women that he hates to see them
at bargain counters, or wearing too much lipstick, or playing tennis in
shorts... one of those things, anyhow. "The worst thing you can
possibly do to the Bonne Femme is to deprive her of a grievance".'

'What on earth are you talking about, Teddy?'

'I'm generalizing about women, only putting in the name of someone we
know instead of the word "woman".'

'You're showing off,' she said severely. 'That's what you're doing. I
had no idea until this minute that you were so cultured.'

'When a man wishes to praise something he says it's "completely
masculine". That means it soars straight to the point, doesn't waver or
jitter, is passionate but cool, logical, consistent, and devoid of
frills. Wouldn't you like to be completely masculine, just naturally
born with all these blessings?'

'No,' said Vicky.

'No?' she said, looking shocked. 'Oh, come now, Miss Morrison, you don't
know what you're saying.'

'If I were a man I'd have to shave every morning and rush about
pretending I knew things I didn't know... like how to put a washer on
a bathroom tap without flooding the house, and changing tyres, and the
difference between the Conservatives and the Liberals... or
Republicans and Democrats. And... good heavens! If I were a man I'd
have to _be_ a Conservative or a Liberal, a Republican or a Democrat...
I wouldn't be able just to vote for whoever was making the least
ass of himself at the moment. Think how awful that would be.'

'Not compared to the unremedable... unremedial... Is either of
those a word?' she asked. 'Anyhow, what I meant was... what I...
what was I saying?' She looked distressed. 'That's the fourth time this
morning I've forgotten what I was saying right in the middle of a
sentence. Am I getting something? Amnesia?'

'You were holding forth on the advantages of complete masculinity,' said
Vicky. Her eyes wandered from Theodora's face to the wall behind her,
and up the wall until they came to rest on the portrait of a middle-aged
man in side-whiskers. 'Oh, I say, Teddy! Look at that! Talk about
complete masculinity... did he ever suffer a moment of feminine
indecision?'

'Never!' She too considered it, awe-struck. 'Why haven't we ever noticed
it before? Here we had this inspirational work, this portrait of a man
who could have shown us the way to better, finer things...' She waved
one hand in a vague gesture indicative of the impossibility of
estimating the countless spiritual advantages to be derived from
prolonged consideration of this work, and went on, 'Why do they stick
him over an old oak cupboard filled with sweaters and worn-out ski
socks?'

The subject of the portrait continued to glare down at them defiantly.
'Probably because of that expression of suspended animus,' said Vicky.
'No one would want him around for long... I mean he has the sort of
face one can't avoid looking at. Wait a minute! _I_ know who that is...
it's Jeanne d'Ormonde's uncle.'

'How do you know?'

'Because only an unnatural and frustrated passion for goldfish could
produce that look of wistful bitterness.'

'You think so?'

'I'm convinced of it.'

'Well, perhaps you're right.'

'He probably assumed that glum appearance after his wife had refused to
stop expressing herself by keeping a girls' finishing school.
Incidentally, she must have been just as cuckoo as he was. Do you
suppose they had any children?'

'But yes,' said Theodora.

'Who?'

'Mlle Dupraix.'

'Mlle Dupraix? Good heavens, how terrible for them. I expect she talked
about basilicas and Corinthian arches even in her cradle.'

'Yes,' said Theodora sadly, leaning against the wall, 'she did. Having
taken a good look at her and observed the unfortunate result of their
union, they decided that it would be a better thing than they had ever
done if they went their separate ways. So, in the middle of Place St.
Franois where that public washroom now stands to mark and commemorate
the spot, they parted for ever, he carrying his five hundred books on
goldfish under his arm, she with her ormolu clock, her six teaspoons and
her Pekinese dog in her hand. Life is sad, Victoria, life is sad...
Gosh, look where we are!' The line was half-way to the drawing-room door
now, and they rushed forward fifteen feet, closing the gap between
themselves and the Andersons. 'Apropos of women,' said Theodora,
settling herself against the wall again, 'supposing I were to fall in
love with your husband... no, supposing you were to fall in love with
my husband, supposing again that I were to acquire one when drunk, or
otherwise not in possession of my faculties... what would happen?'

'I should go to Java and plant coffee, or write an autobiographical
novel, or become a flagpole sitter.'

'Seriously?'

'Seriously?' She shrugged. 'Quite seriously, I should not fall in love
with your husband.'

'Perhaps you couldn't help it.'

'My dear, I'm not the sort of person who "can't help" things, I'm
afraid. Perhaps most people aren't, when it comes right down to it. The
average person falls in love with the available... and for people
like us husbands are _not_ available, so it would never occur to us to
fall in love with them. For modern rugged individualists who don't give
a hoot for anyone but themselves, and who believe that being in love
excuses disloyalty, weakness and foul play... well... I can't say
about them.'

'Have you ever been in love, Vicky?'

Vicky turned on her shoulder... she was leaning against the wall two
or three feet behind Theodora... and looked at her in surprise.
'Yes,' she said simply.

'Much?'

'Yes.'

'That Englishman I introduced you to?'

'Right again.'

'What happened to him?'

'He went to Italy.'

'How thoughtless of him. Are you still... keen on him?'

She was staring straight across the hall toward the front door. Without
turning her head to look at Theodora she said, 'Yes, I think so,' quite
matter of factly. 'At least, I'm not a... a unit, as I was before. I
don't quite belong to myself now... but I don't know, though.' Her
eyes came back to Theodora's face. 'Why did you ask that?'

'I... was... just wondering. You see, I've never been in love with
anyone...'

'I didn't think you were ever really out of it for long.'

She shook her head. 'I have some idea, somewhere in the back of my
head... I haven't the remotest idea where it came from... anyway, some
idea of what such things should be. So far, it's _just_ an idea. I've
too much sense to think that I've ever cared enough about anyone to...'
She stopped, looking rather bewildered. 'Oh, hell,' she said irritably.
'I don't know what I'm talking about.'

'Enough to what?'

'Enough not to be bored. God, how boring most men are, in their relation
to women! You say, at a dance, "Let's go outside", because you're
steaming with heat and want to cool off... and they think you want to
be kissed. The suspicion that they're not attractive to you never occurs
to the little dears. You make some remark... almost any remark...
and they immediately turn it round and aim it back at you. For example,
you say "That _is_ a beautiful girl over there", because you love beauty
and see no reason why, merely because you're a woman, you have to make
an exception of women. What you get back in reply is, "She's not as
lovely as you", or something equally imbecile. You know you're not
beautiful, you've got quite used to not being beautiful, and you don't
_mind_ not being beautiful. And telling you that you are is so obviously
a lie that it embarrasses you, and humiliates you. It's nothing short of
an insult to your intelligence... only of course, being a woman and
Sex being spelt with a capital S, you're not intelligent. You're just a
woman, and all women just _love_ being kissed and mauled by any man.
Well, here's one who's been sent orchids since she was fifteen, who's
acquired dozens of fraternity pins, who's never been a wallflower in her
life, who's had no end of proposals, and yet who _still_ says that
ninety-nine men out of a hundred make her sick.'

'Gosh,' said Vicky. 'I just adore you when you start blazing, you blaze
so beautifully.'

'Theodora Cohen on the male sex,' she said derisively. And a moment
later, 'Of course it's our whole continent.'

'Explain, please.'

'I mean the way we're brought up. Isn't it?' And as Vicky shook her head
incomprehendingly, 'I mean this necking business. Here, in Europe, men
don't seem to go in for it. Instead, they go in for things which my
mother would say were much worse. But I'm not so sure. At least they
call a spade a spade. In America we call it doing the done thing, or a
parked car. Mix up an American girl and a European man and what have
you?'

'A deadlock,' said Vicky.

'No, indeed. She lets him kiss her, and do everything else but, and
then, because he has always thought, poor innocent, that the kissing and
the everything else was only a prelude to the but...'

'You're getting horribly involved,' said Vicky. 'You mean that she
thinks he's a cad because, with his realistic mind, there seems little
sense and little morality in going so far and then stopping. He doesn't
grasp the American game of having your cake and eating it, or,
alternatively, never getting past the prelude to the opera itself.'

'Sometimes they do,' said Theodora, 'without having intended to. Then
it's a shot-gun wedding, and neither the man nor the girl have any more
idea at the end of their lives what it's all about than they had at the
beginning.'

'How do you know?'

'Because,' she said deliberately, 'when I was sixteen, I sat in a parked
car, and things went farther than _I'd_ intended. You see, my mother
taught me all the facts of life from a biological point of view. It was
all very modern and exactly like a text-book. What she didn't bother to
mention was the fact that men and women didn't always have babies in
mind. In any case, because I was her daughter, any kind of desire was
impossible so long as I wasn't married. I mean nice girls don't feel or
do that sort of thing.'

'Were you a nice girl?'

'Certainly.'

'Poor Teddy! I'm beginning to understand you a little better.'

'So one day last July my mother woke up to the fact that I was no longer
a sweet young thing. After running around in circles wondering how it
had all happened, she dumped me here.'

'Because of that!' she said incredulously.

'Yes.'

'But what possible good can it do you to go to boarding-school when
you're almost twenty-one? How long have you been out of school?'

'Four and a half years.'

'Good lord,' said Vicky. 'Your mother must be... well, a little
cuckoo, if you'll excuse my saying so.'

'She is.'

'Where is she now?'

'Paris.'

'What does she do there?'

'I don't know. She's got a gigolo at the Montmartre to teach her French
and the Argentine tango. She's a nice girl too, so of course her feeling
for him is purely that of a mother. Honestly, Vick. She gives him things
and calls him "poor boy", and tries to make him take cod liver oil.' And
a moment later, 'We'll be going back to St. Louis in the autumn. In
twenty years _I'll_ be in Paris, complete with gigolo and maternal
instinct.'

'Perhaps not.'

'There's no perhaps about it. If I had a little less money I'd go in for
good works, and women's clubs. But I've got a lot of money, so I'll go
in for Europe and gigolos.'

'You might, through a series of accidents, marry a man who _did_ know
what it was all about.'

'That's not very probable,' she said indifferently.

They were past the drawing-room door now. The inspection was taking
longer than usual that morning, as Mlle Dupraix was constantly
interrupting herself to scold one of the girls for speaking too loudly,
or speaking the wrong language; or being interrupted by a maid wanting
directions from her in her capacity of housekeeper. The two girls
continued to lounge against the wall.

On their way up the stairs a few minutes later, Theodora said suddenly
as they reached the landing, 'If you get kicked out, I'm going with
you.'

Vicky stopped and turned round. 'You couldn't do that, Teddy.'

'Oh, yes I could. When it comes to a fight, I can beat anyone hands
down. That includes both Amlia and my mother. We've got enough money
between us to live in a Paris garret till I come of age... I mean for
purposes of inheriting my father's wealth... then we can do anything
we like. We might go to Singapore.'

They moved over against the wall out of the way of the girls running up
and down stairs. In the poor light from the stained glass window above
their heads Vicky scrutinized Theodora's attractive face, and could
think of nothing to say but 'Why Singapore?'

'I've always wanted to go there. Singapore, Rio de Janeiro, Madras, and
Pekin.'

'They're a long way from Paris,' said Vicky, looking up at the window.

'Never mind. There are almost no limits to what we can do on my sordid
millions. I'll buy you clothes from Lelong and diamonds from Cartier.'

'I don't care so much about them, but I should like awfully to have
champagne every morning for breakfast and all the Brandenburg
Concertos.'

'They are practically yours,' said Theodora.

Little Klaus and Big Klaus passed them with Truda at their heels. She
stopped as she caught sight of Vicky and said awkwardly, 'Could I see
you sometime to-day?' ignoring Theodora who looked at her menacingly and
remarked, 'I suppose you realize that after your maltreatment of last
night, I am bruised beyond recognition.' She began to whistle 'Die Wacht
am Rhein', without waiting for a reply, and opened her note-book to
stare intently and tactfully at a page on which was written in her large
round hand:

               me
               te        le
               se before la before lui before y before en
               nous      les       leur
               vous

Vicky nodded. 'Later... this afternoon, if you like,' she said in the
rather grave manner she habitually used with people whom she did not
know very intimately. 'Are you going to walk or ski?'

Truda brushed a long string of black hair off her face and said, 'I'll
walk, if that's what you're going to do.' Vicky nodded again, and she
continued on her way downstairs.

Theodora stopped considering the position of pronoun objects, and
raising her eyes to Vicky's, said hurriedly, 'Listen, Vicky, I'm
perfectly serious about leaving. You know as well as I do that Amlia
almost has apoplexy every time she looks at you. There must be something
about your face that she doesn't like. Anyhow, there it is. So remember
that if you go, I go with you.'

2

The snow began to fall less heavily as the morning wore on. By eleven
o'clock when Vicky went to her room she could make out the faint
outlines of the pine-covered point which jutted out into the Lake of
Geneva a mile or so to the west of Lausanne. The sky showed brilliant
splashes of blue here and there, although across the lake there were
still some heavy clouds drifting closer in the still, cold air. The
peaks on the opposite shore were out of sight. They said that you could
tell when spring was on its way, even when there were still drifts of
snow in the narrow streets of Lausanne, and in the corners of the
cathedral, by the clouds which began to float beneath the peaks of the
mountains above Evian, instead of hiding their faces as they did all the
winter.

Her room was on the top floor which was, at this hour, almost deserted.
She was grateful for the quiet all about her. She had only to shut her
door and the school dropped away, almost, she thought, as though she
were leaving it in an elevator rising from the roof. She was glad that
Ina Barren, her room-mate, was not there; she had just seen her in the
lower hall with Rose Budet and Henriette. Vicky hoped that they would
occupy Ina for the next ten minutes; she wanted, most decidedly, to be
alone.

Somewhere beyond her conscious enjoyment of each leisurely winter day
that passed, was a feeling of depression which was weighing down on her,
though she could not account for it. She left the window with a sigh,
and going over to the basin in the alcove, drank a glass of water.
Between the alcove and the window was a blue-tiled dressing-table; the
wall-paper was the usual pink, blue and green on a white background.
Vicky hated flowered wall-papers because she had been brought up in a
house which had nothing else... dull red and purple on brown
trellis-work with a buff-background... but she found the school
wall-paper gay and not in the least monotonous. She cast an appreciative
glance at it, then wandered aimlessly across the room to sit on the edge
of her bed.

Her eyes fell on a photograph of Ina's father, taken at Cambridge, which
was standing on her room-mate's side of the dressing-table. Vicky liked
his looks and wondered for the fiftieth time why he had never realized
that his sister... who had looked after Ina ever since the death of
Mrs. Barren... was anything but good to his daughter.

Mlle Tourain had asked in her hearty way where Vicky's parents were, and
had received an answer so deliberately and obviously evasive when she
pressed the point, that she had remained standing in the middle of
Vicky's room for fully half a minute, at a loss what to say next. There
was nothing in that room... no photograph, no letters, no anything to
connect Vicky with her home in Canada. It was unprecedented. The entire
school wondered why; they speculated, they gossiped, and when they were
there, their eyes searched the room for some tangible evidence that at
one time at least, Vicky _had_ had some kind of home, some background.
They found none.

The only personal belongings, besides the toilet articles on the basin
and dressing-table, were her books. Between the head of her bed and the
window along the west wall was a large bookcase containing over a
hundred paper-backed French novels and plays, two calf-bound volumes of
French poetry which she had given herself at Christmas, three
dictionaries, fifty odd Tauchnitz editions, and several battered volumes
of Greek poetry and drama, as well as an odd assortment of modern
novels. There were also, on the windowsill, six bowls containing bulbs
which she hoped would turn out to be hyacinths, for Rosalie, and a pile
of music two feet high on the floor beneath them.

She sat on the side of the bed with her shoulders hunched a little, her
hands lying loosely in her lap, looking across at the dressing-table,
absently following a crack in the blue tile from one square to the next.
She was tired and her mind confused; she could see herself only too
clearly, standing on the front steps of the school, wondering where she
should go. She thought fleetingly of Theodora... what would happen to
her? And what kind of man had Cohen pre been, not to foresee his wife's
flight to Europe; not to realize that once there with her mother,
Theodora at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen and twenty would
spend a good part of her life sitting in caf's and night clubs watching
her mother's shoulders moving in time to the music, realizing that her
mother's eyes were searching, searching, for some cautious answer to her
demand for diversion. It was all very well to be cosmopolitan, but why
hadn't Mr. Cohen had the sense to see what would happen if a woman of
Mrs. Cohen's temperament... young, attractive, and bored as she was...
were turned loose on the Continent during all those years they must
spend there if Theodora and Lewis were to learn their five languages?

She glanced at the clock on the dressing-table; it was two minutes past
eleven and Mary would be waiting for her in the art room. She did not
yet know what she was going to say about Rosalie; she felt uneasy at
saying anything, but at the same time she was afraid to take the sole
responsibility for her any longer.

Vicky was on the point of getting up to join Mary, when the door burst
open and Ina stood there crying, with a letter in her hand. She was a
small, plain English girl whose mouth usually hung open a little, with
straight fair hair, pale blue eyes and a neglected, unloved look.

She closed the door behind her and gasped in answer to Vicky's alarmed,
'Ina! What is it?' after a struggle to get her breath, 'My father's not
coming this summer after all!' and rushing across the room, hurled
herself at Vicky, winding her arms so tightly about her that she was
unable to move for a moment.

She managed to loosen the arms a little and looking down at the fair
head below her, said in a less sympathetic tone than was natural to her,
'I'm sorry, Ina. Is that letter from him?' She had been forced to adopt
an impersonal manner in all her dealings with Ina, for the girl was
almost hysterically devoted to her, jealous of Theodora and Consuelo,
jealous of everyone Vicky knew, and even jealous of her piano.

She answered jerkily, with a quick nod of her head which was pressing
against Vicky's shoulder, 'He says... he... can't afford to come...
and that I'm to stay here... next summer... and all next year!'

'That's better than going back to your aunt, Ina,' she said gently.

'I haven't seen him for five years.' The untidy blonde head on her
shoulder was raised a little, and Ina stared at her. Then her face
disappeared once more and she continued in her muffled voice, 'He
promised I could go out, back to Ceylon with him, next year. Now he says
I'm to stay here. I can't bear it, Vicky!' She began to sob convulsively
again.

'Ina, try to control yourself a little, please.' She succeeded after
considerable effort in loosening one of her arms so that she could put
her hand under Ina's chin and force her to raise her head. 'You can't
let yourself go like this; if you do, everything will seem ever so much
worse.' She struggled free, and leaving Ina to sit on the edge of the
bed, went over to the basin and got her a glass of water. 'Here, drink
this,' she commanded.

Ina gulped it down, then raised her tear-stained face to Vicky, standing
above her, 'Are you going to be...' A sob caught her throat; she
swallowed, and asked again, 'Are you going to be here next year?'

'Next year, Ina?'

'Yes. You won't, will you? I know you won't, it's no use your trying to
put me off to make me feel better. All the girls are saying that Mlle
Tourain's going to expel you...'

'All the girls are saying that?' she repeated mechanically. 'How do they
know?'

Ina was too wrapped up in her own bitter disappointment to notice that
drop in Vicky's tone which, Theodora could have told her, meant that
Vicky was hurt. She caught hold of her skirt, and holding it tightly in
both hands, she began twisting it into a knot, staring up at her
anxiously.

Vicky sighed, half-smiled down at her, and recovered her skirt, then
retreated to the dressing-table and pulling herself up on it backwards,
sat there swinging her legs and surveying the meagre little figure
before her, wondering what she could do to make this fresh blow less
hard for her. The child was highly-strung, and emotionally unbalanced;
added to that was the fact that her mother had died eleven years before
when she was only five, and her father had immediately returned to
Ceylon, leaving Ina in the care of an aunt who apparently, from all
Vicky could gather, hated her small niece. The aunt's letters to Ina
were always full of small taunts and threats. The child's bogy was the
reformatory; when she had first arrived at the school she had repeatedly
wakened Vicky at night by calling out in her sleep, 'Don't send me away!
Don't send me away!'

She suddenly slid down from the high bed and, running forward, caught
Vicky's hand and held it against her cheek saying passionately, 'Vicky,
don't go away and leave me! Don't go away! You remember, when Ted asked
you to room with her, and I was so afraid you would, you said that
someone had to keep an eye on me, and that you wouldn't go away then. I
can't get along without you, I'll kill myself if Mlle Tourain makes you
leave...'

'Ina, if I leave, it won't be because I want to, you know that. Your
going on this way makes everything much harder. If you're as fond of me
as you say you are, why don't you try to depend on me a little less, to
be less emotional? And there's something else that doesn't seem to have
occurred to you... your father's not exactly rich, is he?'

'No,' she said.

'Do you know how expensive this school is?'

'Expensive?'

'Yes, it is rather. He must have to work very hard to pay your bills
here, and he wouldn't send you to a place like this unless he cared
about you, and were counting on you. I'm not the only one, you know.'

She straightened up, brushed away her tears with the back of her hand,
and said in a more reasonable voice, 'I haven't seen him for so long,
Vicky, that's the trouble. But I'll try not to be such a nuisance, I
promise.' She added, however, as Vicky went out the door a moment later,
'I simply can't help adoring you, though. No one could who knew you as
well as I do.'




CHAPTER VI


The art room was on the top floor, with windows facing Montreux and the
valley of the Rhone to the east, and the mountains to the north. They
were very large casement windows let into the roof at an angle, without
curtains or any sort of shade. The room was very bright and almost
shadowless all day long, with a strange and unearthly quality to the
light which was first cast in by the snow and then thrown back by the
smooth white plastered walls and ceiling.

There were three long drawing-tables cluttered with paints, brushes,
pencils, rulers and sketch-pads; a grand piano in the south-east corner
opposite the door, and busts of Julius Caesar, Augustus, Justinian,
Hadrian, Beethoven, and Voltaire, each on individual columns placed
along the four sides of the room at regular intervals. The glaring white
walls were decorated here and there with etchings and photographs of the
Forum, Carcassonne, Mont St. Michel and Chartres, as well as a few
detailed enlargements of Notre-Dame.

Vicky was sitting on the long table by the east windows, while Mary,
slightly to her left, was on the floor with her back against the wall,
so that she had to turn her head to see her, and had straight in front
of her an uninterrupted view of the orphanage roof... or what could
be seen of it now, for the clouds had already moved over from the
opposite shore, and it had begun to snow heavily again... the tops of
the elm trees which grew close to the building and which had given the
school its name, and the steep slope down to the lake where the Dents du
Midi were visible only at intervals, in the distance.

They were talking about Rosalie, Vicky saying, 'I haven't yet got to a
point where I can be sensible about her. In one peculiar way, she means
more to me than anyone on earth... it's that she seems to be inside
me. I mean that I'm not objective about her, that's the trouble'. She
rubbed her forehead in perplexity, then looking out the windows again,
went on in a more matter of fact voice, 'It's very difficult for me to
discuss her, not only because of my own feelings about her either. She's
told me a great deal... all there is to tell, I suppose... but
actually, if I say that she was born in Montreal on such and such a
date, and her parents were this and that... it doesn't help much. Yet
the part which can't easily be put into words, and which could certainly
not be added to Mlle Tourain's dossier, is the only part that really
matters. It's something which must be felt, to be understood. It
requires imagination, not reasoning. Perhaps some people would think it
was all too intangible and too improbable to be real... but it _is_
real.'

Mary straightened up with a sigh, as Vicky fell into silence again, and
said unhappily, 'I wish there was something in this idea that human
beings can communicate a little of themselves to one another...'

'There probably is something in it. At least I believe in it, I don't
know to what extent.'

Mary looked at Vicky, who, after a quick glance at her, had turned her
eyes to the windows again, and said meditatively, 'I wonder. Sometimes
it seems to me as though it must be true.'

'What were you thinking about?'

'You.'

'Me?' Her grey eyes came back to Mary's face again. 'Why?'

'I was thinking that if only I could get something of you... oh,' she
added with a grimace, 'that sounds ridiculous. But I do wish that in
some way or other you could transmit to me something of yourself... I
mean the part of you which is intuitive... that amazing faculty you
have for understanding other people. It isn't just sympathizing...
it's something far deeper. You really _understand_ them, so that you
know why they did such and such a thing, and what they will do in the
future. There's a magic touch in dealing with people... I suppose one
is born with it, and that one can't possibly acquire it. You're a queer
person, Vicky,' she said, looking up at her intently. 'You really _are_
queer. I've never in my life met anyone in the least like you.'

Vicky detested the way her friends spoke of her and had an impulse to
ask Mary to change the subject which she checked, aware that she usually
had some purpose behind her remarks. She forced herself to say, 'Well,
why am I queer?'

'I don't know. You've a streak of mysticism, haven't you?'

'Not that I know of.'

'It must be there, somewhere... translated into something else,
perhaps. You know, if you'd been born four hundred years ago, you'd have
been very religious, possibly. You're the twentieth-century version of a
mystic... it's rather interesting. I mean you have all the
requirements, even including some curious power over people... but
because you were born twenty-one years ago instead of a few centuries
back, you do nothing with all your...'

'Eccentricities,' suggested Vicky. 'Mary...' She hesitated, then said
as gently as she could, 'You know, we _were_ talking about Rosalie, and
it's rather important.'

'This is important too... it's terribly important to me. Leave
Rosalie for the moment... I'll tell you why in a minute. I'm trying
to get at something. Perhaps it's only the atmosphere of this school
that's working on my nerves, giving me strange, distorted ideas that I
wouldn't have if I were in a different environment... but whether or
not that's true, it's irrelevant. I have a feeling... it's been
growing on me for weeks now... that _this_ is the environment I'm
going to fetch up in... I don't know why, I can't explain. Anyhow, I
do feel it, and I feel that if there were only a god of some sort to
take pity on me, he'd make it possible for me to be a little like you.'

'Why?'

'Because you've a kind of wisdom that only comes with many years of
suffering... as though it had been distilled, and distilled within
you. But because, more than that, you seem to be able to give things up,
and not mind.'

'My dear... I do mind,' she said quietly.

'But not madly, not with every atom of you so that you're... so that
you can't think of anything else. It's as though a bomb had burst inside
you... everything there is torn, ripped up with great jagged edges...'
She gave a long, shivering sigh and buried her head in her arms.
She was crying. In a few moments she got hold of herself, lifted her
head and said, 'Sorry, Vick. Do you know what I'm talking about?'

'Yes, I think I do. He'll be back, Mary. Try to believe that. It's just
this place, as you say, that's been worrying you, turning you in on
yourself.'

'Perhaps. But for some reason or other, I've been half out of my wits
to-day.'

'I know.'

'_Do_ you, Vicky?' she asked almost appealingly.

'Well... I've guessed a lot. Are you waiting for him to come back?'

'Yes,' she said, looking straight in front of her. 'We made an
agreement... or rather I made it. We were to stay apart for a year,
and if he still wanted me at the end of it... and had wanted me enough
during it, to... play straight... then we were going to remarry. You
see, I _had_ to do that, Vicky. Otherwise, it would simply have been
so easy, so terribly easy... too easy for him, to throw me over for
another woman, then throw her over for me. I mean it was almost a case
of Monday night with her and... Tuesday...' She stopped, and bit her
lower lip. A moment later she looked up at Vicky, with a curious
intensity in her glance.

'Don't stare at me like that, for heaven's sake,' said Vicky with a
half-rueful expression. 'I don't know what I've ever done to deserve
your making me feel as though I weren't quite human.'

She shook her head and attempted a smile. 'Right. But you know you do
have a very unnerving effect on me sometimes, although I'm four years
older and I've been around, as Ted would say.' Vicky did not answer. She
was in one of her remote moods, Mary knew, when it was almost impossible
to believe that she was only twenty-one, and to be regarded as a
schoolgirl... it was that, she thought, shifting her weight a little
on the floor, which one couldn't help feeling... that the girl was
simply not like other people, for reasons which were either inherent in
her, or the result of some strange background. 'Vicky, listen to me,'
she said pleadingly.

Her eyes swung round to Mary's face and this time remained there. She
was silent for what seemed to Mary a disconcertingly long time, and then
said with visible effort, 'I wish you and other people wouldn't place so
much responsibility on me. I don't know anything... nothing about you
or anyone else. You'd think I was a sort of oracle... it's absurd.
It's like going to a medical student who's just graduated, and demanding
a brain operation.'

Mary got up, went over to the north windows and then sat down on the
sill, with one hand on either side of her half-supporting her weight.
She heard Vicky say, 'You think it's a... a "magic touch", you called
it, didn't you? A magic touch given to a few specially gifted
individuals at birth. Well, you may be right, but not about me. I
haven't got it; people... a few people... merely think I have, and
with me it's a curse, a silly delusion existing only in the minds of
others, not in _my_ mind. All the same, I'd do anything I could for you.
You know that.'

Mary allowed her full weight to rest on the windowsill and began to
twist a small signet ring on the little finger of her left hand. She
looked down at it a moment, then back at Vicky, whose profile was turned
toward her, and suddenly began to talk in a stream of words which
startled even herself as she uttered them. She told Vicky, or rather
that profile, about her childhood, her girlhood, her marriage, and her
divorce from the beginning to the end.

Vicky said nothing. She did nothing, only turning her head now and again
to glance at Mary, who at last got up, and coming over to her, began to
pace up and down the floor between Vicky, still sitting on the
drawing-table, and the windows which faced Montreux and the valley of
the Rhone.

'I'm all on edge,' said Mary, pausing to glance at the pale, immobile
face beside her. 'It's curious... I feel that now, everything in my
life has driven toward this school... as though it were a sort of
funnel, and that only through it can I live, from now on. You know, I
believe that people can, at least to some extent, visualize their
future. I don't think that the totally unexpected very often happens,
for the reason that the present and the future is far more often than
not, an outgrowth of the past... and that if one looks with
sufficient detachment at things as they were, and at things as they are,
one can at least guess at what will be. At any rate, I can see myself
here... next year, and the year after, and the year after that, while
it becomes increasingly difficult for me to... to identify myself
with Barry. In some queer way, I seem to have gone past him now... I
can only look back on him; I can't look forward to him.'

Vicky said at last, 'You don't need to tell me that, Mary.' Her grey
eyes went back to the window in front of her again; she was searching
for the Dents du Midi but they were not there. The snow was falling so
fast that she could not determine the descent of each individual flake
at all; it seemed to hang like a sparkling veil between her eyes and the
world beyond the windows, with only now and then a chimney, a long
upward trail of thin smoke from the town, piercing it momentarily. Into
and beyond the veil the whole visible world receded, leaving them
isolated in this room with the photographs of the gargoyles of
Notre-Dame, and the busts of dead emperors. The light, shadowless,
unvarying and strained, made the whole scene fantastic.

'What an excellent place for hysterics,' remarked Vicky cheerfully,
'[Greek: schias onar anthrpos]... you never studied Greek, did you?
"Man is the shadow of a dream..." That seems to me, at the moment,
to be very apt. Our ambitions, our ideals, our suffering exist only in
our minds, until we endow them with substance by translating them into
words, or into actions. Yet what exists in the mind is, to me anyway,
the only reality, the only certainty. God is within us all to a greater
or lesser extent, according to the magnitude of our conceptions.
My views,' she added, looking amused, 'are excessively androcentric.'

Mary said nothing. Vicky looked at her rather anxiously, being made
aware of the silence which pervaded the room by the noise of a door
slamming somewhere below. The sound seemed to fall away before it
actually reached them, and her voice, when she spoke again, was limited
to the small living space by the east windows where Mary was walking up
and down, and she sitting on the edge of it, thought Vicky, conscious of
the vacuum behind her. 'Why do you stay here, Mary? It's so hard for
you. It's all right for me, and I love being here, simply because
everything which has to do with the material side of life is so
pleasantly inevitable. I mean, lunch is produced at twelve-fifteen, and
it would take an earthquake to make it twelve-twenty. I'm left free to
wander about and think in peace. I get a lot of work done and I enjoy
living with other people... within certain limits, of course,' she
added, grimacing slightly. 'But all it's doing to you is to make you
lonely and introspective, and I don't think it's good for you.'

Mary sat down on the sill facing Vicky and considered that for a moment.
'It's odd, living in a girls' school, isn't it? We all seem so detached
from one another. Do women live within and between their own personal
mental horizons more than men? I don't know. We're supposed to chatter
incessantly about ourselves when we get together, we women. We're
supposed to gossip, and know everything about everyone else... but
here we don't. We're all separated from one another. I've no point of
contact with anyone but you... you have none even with me... with
no one but... Rosalie. Isn't that true?'

'Contact? What sort of contact?'

'I don't really know you, Vicky. I can tell what you're going to do, but
I can't tell why you do it. I never feel that you're quite there, and
you give me the impression that a great deal of what's gone to make you
as you are is outside my experience... perhaps even my understanding.
Oh, I know we've wasted hours talking generalities... like that
afternoon you spent with me at the Centrale beer garden trying to
convince me that the D Minor was Csar Franck's life... incidentally,
I still don't see that. Look at Tchaikovski... he really had quite a
decent time of it, all things considered, with that beneficent widow who
gave him six hundred pounds a year or something like that, didn't she?
No one could say that his life was in any way marked by misfortune, or
unusual suffering, yet his music is tragic. On the other side of the
medal is Mozart, whose life was a series of heartbreaks which seem to
have found no outlet at all in his work. And Bach, the musician, was
infinitely greater than Bach the man.'

'"Car de faire la poigne plus grande que le poing, la brasse plus
grande que le bras, et d'sprer enjamber plus que l'estendue de nos
jambes, cela est impossible et monstrueux; _ny que l'homme se monte au
dessus de soy et de l'humanit_..."'

'You're always quoting Montaigne at me.'

'He's a good antidote,' said Vicky.

'An antidote for what?'

She shrugged. 'Can you separate the mind into various compartments? Can
you divide the body from the mind, the mind from the spirit? Can you
subdivide all three into little sections labelled the religious sense,
the moral sense, the aesthetic sense? I don't think so. I don't think
you can split Bach into two, and call the two parts "the man" and "the
musician". If you believe that it is only through truth, through beauty,
and through goodness that man attains to the highest, then there has
never been a great philosopher who did not seek beauty, nor a great
artist who was not good.'

'You think Bach was good... I mean in the absolute sense?'

'Is anyone ever good, "in the absolute sense"?' she countered.

'No, I suppose not. Leave Bach out of it then... what about
Michelangelo?'

'Do you believe in art for art's sake?'

'N--o,' said Mary doubtfully. 'But think of... well, Gauguin, for
example.'

'Think of Van Gogh, instead. He was the genius of the two. There's no
such thing as a "mad" genius; it's rather the opposite. They are sane
where we are insane. Van Gogh's sanity was the sanity of St. Francis of
Assisi, Joan of Arc, Leonardo, Socrates. You were thinking of his
"morals",... using the word in its modern, limited sense of sexual
morals... which, if not exactly irrelevant, is rather begging the
question.'

'You're being illogical,' said Mary.

'I usually am... more so to-day, because I've got a headache. But
why, particularly?'

'You can't say his conduct with women was irrelevant, and say at the
same time that it's impossible to segregate the physical from the...
well, whatever it was you said.'

'You're using the word "morality" in the parochial sense of sexual
morality; I wasn't. However, if you want to use it that way, it's still
not easy to condemn him on those grounds. I don't know what your
standards are, but I should think that one was immoral when, among other
things, the physical elements were predominant... and then I have a
lot of old-fashioned notions about not hurting other people which might
be described in a more dignified and learned way as the "relative
importance" of the issues involved. But don't let's talk about sex...
it's only one aspect of life, after all. I'm afraid I find it dull,
over-emphasized alike by the puritanical and the exponents of free love.
The one group endow it with too much negative importance, the other with
too much positive importance.'

'What do _you_ believe, Vicky?' she asked suddenly.

'I believe in everyone minding his own business,' said Vicky.

'Apart from that... and seriously?'

'I believe in God, and in miracles. I don't believe that the importance
of the individual can possibly be under-estimated... in other words,
I can't feel that my particular troubles are of any interest to Him, nor
yours either.' She smiled suddenly, and continued, looking straight in
front of her, 'I think He has "rather a take it or leave it" attitude
toward us. Every little while a miracle happens, and a man of genius is
born. Through him we are moved forward; through him we are given a
glimpse of those three absolutes... truth, and beauty, and goodness,
and then left free to choose between them and the untrue, the ugly, and
the bad. Genius can't be explained... I believe that it's a miracle
of God, and neither you nor anyone else can refute my statement...
because you can't explain it. I don't believe in... well, Faure's
theory of the man and the moment, because I'm more of a Platonist than
anything else, and I'm therefore rather inclined to think that the
majority is always and invariably _wrong_... I don't mean
politically. You see, my training has been almost entirely classical.
I'm not a romanticist. So far as my personal standards are concerned, I
try, rather weakly, to be good. I love beauty, and I spend a lot of time
reading sthetics and metaphysics. I believe in the moral obligation
contained in the words "I ought",... and I don't believe that
anything I've said for the past ten minutes is in the least original.'

'I never suspected you of being religious, somehow,' said Mary. 'I don't
know why, exactly... but I didn't. Perhaps because most of us aren't
nowadays... perhaps because we're accustomed to thinking of religion
as belief in a personal God. Do you pray?'

'No, but I swear beautifully in several languages.'

Mary looked up at her quickly. That half-amused tone usually meant one
thing and one thing only... Vicky was heading her off. Evidently she
considered that she had done enough talking about herself for one day.
Mary said, anxious to catch her before she escaped once more, 'Be
autobiographical for once, if you can... will you, Vicky?'

'You mean explain my "mysterious past," my lack of photographs of mother
and baby brother in 1921? All right. There's really no reason why I
shouldn't. The reason why I haven't is, I think, fairly natural under
the circumstances... for one cannot dismiss a thing from mind, and
babble about it to others at the same time.'

'No. Even my limited intelligence can grasp that.'

'However, if there's anything you want to know,' said Vicky, with an
obvious effort to speak lightly, 'go ahead and ask questions. I can't
just begin with "I was born on the 15th of August, 1913, of English and
American parentage, in London, England..."'

'What!'

'I observe that you expected something more bizarre,' she said, amused
at Mary's astonished expression. 'What _did_ you expect? An Indian squaw
and the Siamese consul-general?'

'Where are your parents?' Mary asked, ignoring Vicky's last remark. 'Are
they alive? And which was which?'

'What do you mean, which was which? You could tell my mother from my
father... Oh, I see what you mean. My mother was American, my father
is English. That answers both questions.' An indescribable look
flickered across her face as she mentioned Morrison, but it vanished
before Mary looked up. Vicky was rather grimly determined to be
impersonal.

'How and when did they go to Canada?'

'They came separately. My mother can't be said to have "come to Canada",
at all. She only dropped in one night when she happened to be passing.
I'll be as simple as possible. My father belongs to conventional,
middle-class England. My mother belonged to conventional, lower
middle-class America. They met in London. My father was at the time
doing post-graduate work in archaeology at Cambridge. I... occurred.
Nine months later I was born, unfortunately. You needn't look like that,
Mary... it depends on how you view these things. If you believe in
almost _any_ morality, it's unfortunate, and that's all there is to it.'

'What happened?'

'My mother raised a considerable row, blackmailed my father's family,
got some money from them, and then took me to the States. My father was
then dispatched to Canada for the good of England... what we call a
"remittance man"... No, darling, they were _not_ married.' She was
finding this even more difficult than she had expected, but her face was
too disciplined to give her away. She was picking out fact from all the
confusion of memory, trying to gain time in which to decide what to say
and what not to say. 'He's in central Turkey now, on an American
agricultural survey organized by Mustapha Kemal. I ran away when he'd
been gone two weeks.'

'You ran away?' she repeated in astonishment.

'He left the first week in August, ten days before my twenty-first
birthday. I inherited some money from my aunt... about four hundred
and fifty pounds a year. So I cleared out while the going was good.'

'Oh.' Mary waited for Vicky to go on, but she was silent again. It
seemed to be becoming a sort of question and answer conversation, and
she had no desire to appear curious. She scanned Vicky's face, and
finding no irritation, no impatience, but merely that look of mental
strain, went on hesitatingly, 'What was he like?... your father, I
mean. What sort of man is he?'

It was a long time before she answered. She was staring at the gargoyle
on the wall to the right of the window, seeing beyond it, as the
gargoyle faded, into a suddenly clarified past. One scene after another
rose up before her eyes, but always fell away, giving place to the first
again... a long, tastelessly furnished room hung with dark red
curtains, and with a black marble fire-place in which some coal was
burning, shedding an orange-bluish light on the furniture near by. There
was a small, round brass table on six upright ebony legs inlaid with
mother-of-pearl, in front of and slightly to one side of the fire-place.
She was sitting on the floor behind a high-backed chair and leaned
forward once or twice to run her fingers over the mother-of-pearl...
little diamonds and hearts of it set in the black wood... somewhat
fearfully, for her mother whom she could see round the left side of the
chair, was drunk.

She was standing by a long table which was between the door and the
fire-place, supporting her swaying body with one hand clinging to the
edge, while the other held a glass of brandy. She was talking, crying,
and swearing by turns, while, at the other end of the table, her father
sat with his legs stretched out in front of him, staring into the fire.

She kept repeating, 'All right, I'm going, I'm going... but that
nuisance is not coming with me. Do you hear that? I'm goddamned if I'm
going to lug her around any longer. I've had seven years of it, and I'm
through. It's your turn now... you keep her for seven years, then
send me a wire when she's fourteen and maybe I'll come back for her.'
She lost hold of the brandy glass and it fell to the floor, smashing
into small pieces.

Vicky watched that small, eager child dressed in threadbare black velvet
with a soiled lace collar, an incredibly thin child with long black hair
and terrified grey eyes who was herself, and smiled a little. Here that
child was now, swinging her legs as she sat on a drawing-table in the
art room of Pensionnat Les Ormes, Lausanne, Switzerland. Then her mind
went back again: the man and woman quarrelled, her mother now moaning
and whining, then shouting; her father sharp, bitter, hopeless. They
both seemed immensely tall and out of focus, from her position behind
the chair on the floor, and when her father stood up at last, his legs
were cut in two by the round brass table, and she could hardly see his
face, above the light cast by the fire, in semi-darkness. Her mother
went away, having forgotten to say good-bye to her child, who, after a
hasty glance at the door to be sure she was not coming back, continued
to sit, silent and motionless, staring at the strange man's
half-illuminated face. She had never seen her father before. She never
saw her mother again.

She could remember nothing more with any distinctness, until her
eleventh birthday. It was the same over-crowded room, with the same dull
wall-paper of brown and red on a buff background. She had wanted to have
a party, because she had been reading a book given her by her aunt in
which the children had a party. She asked her father. He had said, 'You
can't. No one would come even if I let you invite them. You're
illegitimate. That means that people don't like you, they don't want to
see you. That's the reason none of the children you know are allowed to
play with you. Do you see?' She had nodded, then escaped upstairs,
repeating the word 'illegitimate' over and over again to herself. She
did not know what it meant, but it was evidently an important word.

Her mind returned to the present. She glanced at Mary, trying to
remember her last question, then said, 'I can't describe him in one
sentence. He was all mixed up... he still is. There's nothing very
simple and uncomplicated about him. You have to know a great deal about
him, in order to understand even a little.'

'Your mother, then. What was she like?'

'Slovenly. Everything about her was slovenly... her mind, her soul,
also her clothes. I don't think she was really a bad lot in the
beginning, but dragging a fatherless child about isn't very easy. She
was rather incompetent, but I think she'd have held on to her jobs if I
hadn't furnished such a good excuse for getting rid of her. I don't know
why she didn't put me in a home... I suppose she wanted to square
herself as much as possible with her respectable ancestors and her
respectable upbringing... by doing _something_ for me, at any rate.
However, she just went from mediocre to bad, and from bad to worse. She
eventually drank herself to death in Mobile, Alabama. There's something
quite irrevocable about drinking yourself to death in Mobile, Alabama,
isn't there?'

'I wish you wouldn't... look like that.'

'My dear, you can hardly expect me to be sentimental about her. I never
saw her after she dropped in on my father in Toronto one evening, and
handed me over.'

'Were you fond of her?'

'She was all I had to be fond of. But now... well, I suppose it was
the best thing for me, and certainly he provided a better environment
than she ever had, but _his_ respectable upbringing never allowed him to
forget the way in which he had degraded himself with my mother, and
never allowed me to forget it either. I was not allowed to lose sight of
the fact that I had been born in what must have been a singularly
pointless and futile sin, nor to lose sight of the fact that I'm
illegitimate.'

'Vicky!' she said in horror.

'I told you that,' she said.

'I thought you meant that they weren't married until... well, until
you were on the way.'

'No. They never married, and I'm still illegitimate. Does that shock
you? I suppose it does,' she said meditatively, looking down at the
floor. Then her eyes returned to Mary's face. 'I heard enough from my
father of what Toronto thought about us... people like us. But it's a
provincial place and could hardly be called progressive so far as moral
charity is concerned, so I thought... Oh,' she added, half-smiling
again, 'I don't really know what I thought. But what _do_ you feel?'

'I... can't quite describe it. But it makes you seem...'

'Seem what?' she asked, looking at the gargoyle again. 'Different from
the ordinary run... an equivalent to a changeling, for example? A
cuckoo in the nest... a leprechaun... a faun.' And as Mary said
nothing she turned her head to look at her again and went on as quietly
as before, 'At any rate, it puts me outside the ordinary society of
ordinary people like _that_...' she dropped her hand on the table,
'Doesn't it, Mary?'

'No, Vicky! No, it doesn't!' said Mary passionately. 'Why should it? It
doesn't mean that _you're_ not the same as the rest of us...'

'Oh, but I'm not, Mary,' she said, shaking her head and looking at her
with a faint smile.

'But why? Why _shouldn't_ you be?'

'Why? What's "why" got to do with it? Do you expect, like Mlle Tourain,
to find a reason behind every fact, before you'll recognize the
existence of the fact itself? I'm not respectable... I'm different...
I'm inconvenient, I'm awkward to have about. Reason hasn't anything
to do with it.'

'It has usually,' she said almost unwillingly. 'Really, that's true,
Vicky. Conventions are like... like traffic lights, directing and
simplifying the movement of society from generation to generation. Even
things that are awfully unfair... You said yourself, a moment ago,
that you didn't agree with the modern tendency toward extreme
individualism. You must have meant by that... or whatever it was you
said... that it is the majority and not the minority...' She
stopped. Those grey eyes were looking at her again, Vicky's damnable
ability to see through a remark into its implications and in spite of
their possible reference to herself, to accept them without emotion and
without prejudice, was once more in evidence.

She said quietly, 'And I still mean it. Because I happen to be in the
unfortunate minority doesn't blind me to the fact that illegitimacy can
hardly be accepted as the... done thing.'

'What was your mother like?' Mary asked, anxious to get off the subject
as quickly as possible. She bitterly regretted her defence of convention
as soon as it was out. Perhaps Vicky thought that she was in agreement
with... the people of Toronto. 'I mean what else?'

'She was very genteel,' said Vicky tentatively.

'Genteel!'

'Yes. She used to drink sloe gin from the bathroom glass with her little
finger delicately curved.'

'Like those dreadful Anderson girls!' said Mary, shuddering.

'Then she'd wipe her mouth in the grand manner with a dirty towel, when
there was only me to see her... and I was always as far away from her
as the other side of the bed would allow me to go.' Her hands dropped
down to her sides, and she sat relaxed, her face still expressionless
except for the tense muscles around her mouth. For the first time, she
was realizing that no matter how she struggled to attain a sense of
proportion and to dismiss from mind all the evil days through which she
had come to the present; no matter how she fought to prevent herself
from harbouring any but the few good memories she had... no matter
what she did, her birth would loom large in the minds of others, ugly
and unforgettable. She could blame her own sane and truth-loving mind,
her unwillingness to rail against inevitabilities and against
unalterable facts, for her present knowledge that though, if she were
less self-controlled and more self-pitying, she might say entreatingly,
'Look at me as I am, not as you think I must be as a result of all
this', it would do no real and lasting good, and might well endanger the
integrity for which she had fought, and was still fighting.

She said, a moment later, 'I can't remember a time when I didn't feel
sorry for my father. Even when I was very young, I sensed his great
unhappiness. He had started life for a second time after he came to
Toronto... pulled himself together, got a job in the university, and
was even engaged to a nice girl, when my mother deposited me on the
doorstep. After that, perhaps partly because he expected the worst, the
worst happened. He lost his job, lost his fiance who had been brought
up to believe that... such conduct as his, nine months before my
birth, was a fundamental and ineradicable blot on the character of man
or woman. If a man would do that, he'd do anything... commit murder,
or become a drunkard... anything in fact. People seem to forget,
sometimes, that physical passion is not, like thieving or cruelty, or
murder, an out-and-out moral issue. It's not simple, a straight question
of right or wrong. It's more than that. I see nothing evil in what he
did, but only in the punishment... as self-inflicted and inflicted by
others. I think he was an utter fool; I think he was a fool because in
that moment he chose something shoddy, something cheap, something easy.
All the same, his punishment was out of all proportion to his crime...
if I ever have children, I shall tell them that. I shall tell them
that people are still of such a nature as to hang you for tripping and
falling in the mud.'

'Do you believe that?'

'Yes,' she said slowly. 'I'm not thinking of the individual alone, in
this instance any more than in any other, but of the fact that
intolerance hurts the victims of it less than it does those who are
guilty of it. To sin against others is worse than to sin against
yourself... though perhaps you can't ever do one without doing the
other.' She paused, then went on reflectively, 'It seems odd to me even
now, that my father, instead of reacting against the condemnation of
society, came to see himself as others saw him. I can still hear him
saying each morning, "we have left undone those things we ought to have
done, we have done those things we ought not to have done, and there is
no health in us". He was a puritan; he tried his best to impress upon me
the doctrine of original sin. I remember saying to him once that if
marriage was only a means of avoiding burning; if the highest ideal was
lifelong chastity, then it seemed to me that if we Christians were to
live up to our beliefs, it would be race suicide. He said that since the
evil of the world far outweighed the good, that was the logical
conclusion. He remarked a few minutes later that my own existence was an
indisputable proof of God's opinion on the subject.'

'What did he mean by that?' asked Mary, looking puzzled.

'That He deliberately contrived to make the punishment of adultery more
severe than any other, by visiting the sins of the father upon the
child.'

Mary said slowly, 'I've always admired you, but now I think you're
simply unbelievable. How on earth have you managed to emerge from all
that, not only sane, but saner than any of us?'

'With any kind of logical mind at all, it would have been pretty
difficult for me to escape the realization that virtue and convention...
goodness, if you like... have at least an immeasurably negative value.
Just wait until you're stripped of both!'

'Did he blame you, or only himself?' Mary asked, turning to glance out
of the window at the falling snow.

'I think it would have taken a heroic character not to blame me. After
all, he'd have stayed in the university and married the girl he loved,
if I hadn't upset the apple-cart by turning up after seven years, during
which he had tried very hard to straighten out his life. It mightn't
have taken him so long if he hadn't had a puritan upbringing. But he
had, so it _did_ take those seven years, during which my mother and I
wandered around the North American continent, for him to forget the mud
in which he had wallowed... for him to clean himself up a little.
Then we walked in the door, and I think that same evening he allowed
himself to slip back over all the ground he'd gained since he last saw
us. At any rate, the door that closed behind my mother when she went out
was never really opened again. For thirteen years we remained behind it,
watching ordinary people go by in the street. Yet, perhaps through
loneliness, and perhaps partly because he was resolved to do what he
could for me, he kept me with him fairly constantly, and did his best
for me, according to his lights. I remember one time he read me a
description of the things they did to illegitimate children during the
Inquisition. It was supposed to be an extract from Merekowski's
_Leonardo_, and it wasn't until a long time afterwards when I could
bring myself to read the book, that I found there was nothing about
illegitimate children in it. You can see for yourself something of his
character by that; you can imagine the state he was in by then... the
state that a man with a good mind such as his would _have_ to be in
before he could sit in a chair and read... or rather fabricate...
such horrible things for the spiritual benefit of his small daughter.'

She seemed to Mary to be preoccupied, as though each thing she said,
even as she said it, brought up a train of ideas to be followed and
sorted out in her mind. Mary was anxious to make up for her lapse into
obvious horror, for her silly remarks about conventions and traffic
signals... she had let Vicky down badly then, she thought angrily...
and she continued to prompt her. 'What happened after your mother
left you there?'

She was looking through the window into the outer world again, as she
said, shifting her position on the drawing-table, 'He did nothing for
ten years but study. He tutored me himself. I was harshly disciplined,
mentally and physically. I was ready for university at fifteen, but he
wouldn't let me go.' She ran one hand over her dark hair, and tried once
more to smooth out the tense muscles in her forehead; her head was
aching badly now. 'I never went to school. He taught me mathematics, a
certain amount of science... I think he was disappointed that my
brain was not very scientific; geology was about the only subject in
that group I ever did very well... he taught me Latin and Greek and
German, a good deal of history, a certain amount of archaeology, and a
considerable amount of Mlle Dupraix's "Beaux Arts".' She paused a
moment, then said with sudden enthusiasm, 'Here's something that might
interest you. It isn't fair to him to give a one-sided picture of him,
and I sometimes think that I wouldn't exchange that training... that
mental training... even for a more balanced psychological
environment. We really had a lot of fun. For example... we did Plato,
Socrates, Leibnitz, Nietzsche, and Kant, beginning when I was about
fourteen... coming to them through a good many others, of course.
Anyhow, when I was about nineteen we started in on the English
Empiricists, and then we really began to have a thoroughly good time
together. My father is, as you can see for yourself, an utter
empiricist. His judgment of everything is based on the proof of
experience. Mine isn't. Anyhow, we started off with John Locke, and from
then on had some of the best arguments I ever expect to have with
anyone.'

'I suppose,' said Mary, 'that you read Plato in Greek at fourteen.'

'Yes. That's not so extraordinary when you consider that I had no
playmates, so there was never anything else to do but work. Besides
that, it was not such an uncommon thing up to the sixteenth or
seventeenth century. I grant you that my upbringing is fairly weird for
the twentieth century, but there'd have been nothing extraordinary about
it in A.D. 1100.'

'But this,' said Mary, 'is not A.D. 1100, so you must forgive me if it
seems a little odd, to say the least of it. What was your aunt like...
the one who left you enough to escape on?'

'She was a great deal older than my father... my grandfather married
twice, once at twenty-two and a second time at sixty-one, so you see
there was quite a gap between the two families! She was one of those
women who should marry and have children, but men being the idiots they
are, and because she didn't do embroidery or have a pretty face, but, on
the other hand was wise, tolerant and scholarly, no one wanted her...
or rather, no one whom she respected very much wanted her. She tried
very hard to adopt me, but my father, for reasons best known to himself,
wouldn't give me up, so she came to Toronto and contented herself with
doing what she could. My father hated his whole family for obvious
reasons, but he allowed me to go to her house for tea once or twice a
month. She was able to counterbalance a certain amount of what was
really bad in my upbringing.'

'Was it she who taught you music?'

'No. My father. He loves music. He used to take me to concerts; we'd sit
in the back row of the top gallery, getting there late and leaving
early. Music acted on him the way drink does on some people... a
brief period of tremendous stimulation, and then black depression. He'd
never let me go to bed when we got home, he always wanted to talk. We'd
arrive at the house, go into the living-room, he'd poke up the fire and
I would sit, waiting for him to say something, rocking with fatigue. At
last he'd begin to talk... about the structure of St. Sophia or the
Blue Mosque; whether or not the Basque people were of Celtic origin;
whether or not their language _did_ belong in the Ural-Altaic group...
everything, anything, on and on. Sometimes I wouldn't get to bed
until three or four in the morning, but I had to be up at seven anyhow.
My father never slept more than four or five hours a night; he said most
people wasted far too much time sleeping, and that was all anyone
needed.'

'Vicky...' said Mary after another brief silence.

'Yes?'

'Don't you ever feel sorry for yourself... don't you ever think that
it's all... well, rather unjust, to say the least of it?'

'No,' she said, looking surprised. 'Why should I? One doesn't expect
justice from life... it's the function of human beings to put it
there, and I don't feel that my particular initial disadvantage has
anything to do with God. If I did, then I should certainly be most
unhappy... but I don't. You see, I _am_ very religious.'

Mary said doubtfully, 'I don't understand you. If you really were very
religious, you'd believe that, even if it were not His responsibility at
least it was to Him that you should appeal for help.'

'For help? But it hasn't anything to do with Him! It's _my_ problem...
the problem of society, if you like, but not His. What has He got to
do with ugliness and evil? Nothing. I don't blame this on anyone; if
I did I should be compromising in everything I believe. My whole scheme
of things would have to be torn down and erected again on a basis which
would certainly be rather egocentric, if nothing else. You see, I really
believe in those three absolutes, those attributes of God, if you like.
Their importance seems to be borne out by the evidence of past
civilizations... those that were purely material, those which were
ugly, and those in which evil predominated, have all gone and left
almost nothing behind them. Other aspects of life, except in so far as
they contribute something to those three, are transient, negative if you
like.'

And a moment later, as Mary said nothing, but continued to look
uncomprehending, 'I know I don't explain this very well, because
naturally it's not very clear to me. It's only something that I feel.
I'm a very ordinary human being, with no exceptional talents.'

'Hasn't anything ever turned you upside down? Confused you, shaken you,
almost destroyed your peace of mind?'

'Yes,' she said quietly. 'And again something quite ordinary... a
man,' she added. In answer to Mary's inquiring look she flushed slightly
and went on, seeing that she expected something further, 'I was in love
with him. He got fed up with me and went in search of a warmer climate'.
She paused, then remarked in a carefully controlled voice, 'I suppose
it threw me off centre rather more than it would have if I'd been used
to... being actively happy. I wasn't used to that... my life had
been... I don't know how to describe it... you might say "passively
happy" which is very different. I don't suppose you can quite imagine
how entirely free of the... little things which are so nice... how
free of them my life had been. I mean my... my aunt... was always...
glad that I was alive... but apart from her, I was alone. I mean
"alone" in the sense that I lived quite literally by myself. After
she died, I might just as well have been on a desert island, so far as
loving other people and being loved in return were concerned.'

Mary said, her voice trembling, 'Then everything which the normal person
distributes among a dozen or more relatives, friends, and small love
affairs, must have gone into that one person. How terrible, Vicky.'

'Well, it was the only time in my life that I felt like saying to God,
"Really, this is a bit excessive. Aren't You going to let me have
anything?" But I got over that, after a little while. One shouldn't try
to make up for a lifetime in a short period. I expect,' she added
lightly, 'that the super-saturation rather got on his nerves. I don't
blame him. It must have been rather like the Sorcerer's Apprentice
returning home with the river instead of just a bucket full of water. I
think he was essentially the sort of man who preferred love in small
doses... not much at a time, but frequently, with changes to make it
more interesting. I am not that sort of woman. I don't mean that I wept
all over him or anything, but all my life I've loved beauty... the
truth and the goodness come to me through it, I'm afraid... and my
morality is based on that. When it was all finished, I realized that,
like my father, I had not chosen the beautiful, and because I'd tried
for so long, so very hard, to do just that... it was pretty awful.
Then, because I loved him, my life was full to overflowing, as it had
never been before, and for the first time in my life I agreed with
Spinoza,' she added, half smiling. 'I perceived that I was a bit young
to exist entirely upon the fruits of philosophy.'

Mary was not deceived by the bantering manner. She continued to sit
motionless on the windowsill, watching Vicky's face. Once more it was
impossible to tell what she was feeling. There was no suggestion of
emotion in her face, only that lovely quality of stillness, of passion
and spirituality, which was unforgettable. Mary said at last, 'Then
you've gone through what I've been through... only you've come out on
top. I haven't. You make me feel rather small... because that brief
interlude must have meant more to you, and taken more away from you when
it ended, than most people would realize.'

Vicky said quickly, 'I suppose my intellect has the ascendance and the
greater power over me. Except for a while after the man I loved left me,
it has always been able to maintain a balance. I can remember so many
times when I was utterly sick at heart during my childhood... up to
the time I left, in fact... when the sterile unhappiness which
pervaded every corner of that house would eat into my soul. Even at the
worst of times, though, something could always pull me out of it...
Bach, Shakespeare, Montaigne. That sounds hopelessly academic, doesn't
it? But it's not, it's the opposite. Through their minds we come closer
to reality and to God, sometimes.'

She looked at Mary again, wondering how she could live without
alternatives, without anything which had its origin in her mind, was
revitalized by contact with other minds, and could sustain her through
emotional havoc. If all you were, all your hope and your faith was
poured into something as risky as a human being, and that human being
let you down, what did you have left? Nothing, apparently.

Mary said hopelessly, 'This beastly winter looks as though it would last
for ever', then went on with sudden intensity, 'Vicky, I'm so afraid.
Everything I think about Barry now has a... a dying fall. If I could
only make myself believe that some day he'd be back...' She got up
from the windowsill and began to walk about the room again. Her voice
came from behind Vicky a moment later, saying, 'If I could only see
myself anywhere but here, in the future', almost as though she were
talking to herself.

Vicky slid round so that she was facing Mary, and said, 'What makes you
think there's been another woman since the last time you saw him?'

'I don't know. But if I see him again, I'll know the very first
minute... and if he has done it again, I won't be able to bear it. You
see, I did manage the first time, because going on alone, not as his
wife but as the person who had been created by that marriage, who was
alone for the first time, was... not exactly interesting... but... Oh,
I don't know how to put it. Then, slowly, I went back to identifying
myself with him. You don't know how much I do that...' She stopped,
looked at Vicky, and saw that she did know. 'You must think I'm a fool,
Vick. But you see, I was married very young. My mother died when I was
very young. My father was in the Air Force, mad about flying and really
not much interested in anything else. So far as I was concerned, he
never came down to earth at all! Stephen, my brother... there were
just the two of us... was ten years older than I. He inherited all my
father's passion for speed and mobility. He eventually got himself
killed in a smash at Brooklands,' she added quite matter of factly.

Vicky said, looking beyond her at a photograph of Mont St. Michel, 'You
must have grown up almost as much alone as I.'

'No, because I was at boarding-school most of the time. In the summers I
used to go to Dieppe with a family of cousins, so I had plenty of
companionship. But it wasn't, any of it, the sort of companionship which
provides any intellectual stimulus. That's what I'm trying to get at. I
was just a very ordinary middle-class English girl, healthy, bouncing,
and fond of games, until I met my husband. My mental development, if
any,' she interjected wryly, 'all took place after my marriage, so that
there was no important aspect of my life which he hadn't touched upon...
more than that, really. No important aspect which he hadn't...
planted, tended, and helped along. When he left, he took almost
everything there was of me with him. Husbands and wives should have
their separate interests, if only to provide for such emergencies!'

'As a form of insurance,' said Vicky, almost inaudibly.

'Yes. Well, I had just managed to pull myself together and...
integrate the old Mary, the person who was largely my husband, and the
new who was a combination of both, when he telephoned me, and against my
will, at the very sound of his voice, I was pitched back to where I had
been when he left me. I began to include him again. I find myself now
mentally referring to him for an opinion, thinking about him consciously
or unconsciously all the time. The idea of him is always there, in the
back of my mind. I catch myself at odd moments... half-way
downstairs, opening a door, watching a hockey match, waiting for change
in a shop... and realize that my mind's only half on what I'm doing...
the other half seems to be saying his name, trying to visualize
him, and... more than either of those two things... constantly
imagining the happiness of being with him again. Day-dreaming, if you
like. _That's_ what makes me different from the other women here. They
think, poor things, that it's because I have an independent income...'

'Because ever since they can remember, and as far as they can see into
the future, everything they do and everything they want to do but can't,
comes down to money.'

'Yes... but we need men just as much as we need money.'

'Possibly,' said Vicky, still looking critically at Mont St. Michel.
'Sex and money are rather alike, though. Both of them have terrific
negative importance.'

'If you're going to generalize again,' said Mary warningly, 'I shan't
listen.'

'I'm not,' she said hastily. And looking at Mary again, 'You wouldn't
ever resemble Frulein Lange, and Mlle Devaux et al, though, Mary.'

Mary was back at the north windows again, looking down into the
snow-filled courtyard. 'Yes, I would!' she answered passionately.
'There's something sterile and static about a school, something that
creeps into you and changes you without your knowing it. Eventually the
place comes to stand between you and the uncomfortable business of
living and adapting yourself to others. In a school, you don't have to
adapt yourself, because it's so easy to make others adapt themselves to
you.'

She relaxed and sank down on the windowsill again, while Vicky continued
to look at her anxiously. 'And of course I'll stay, if my daydreams come
to nothing. Not for any of those reasons... they'll come later!...
but because here is something tangible, something difficult to do,
something to set my teeth in, something to hold on to, to steady myself.
Then after a while I'll grow older and begin to shirk in little things,
and forget all about the silly, idealistic person I am now. Why that
girl in 1934 and 1935 actually worried about Cay Shaunessy and Truda
Meyer... how absurd and childish of her! Stamp out their oddities,
make them conform, make them uniform so that they cease to possess
this awkward individuality, so that they're all alike on the surface
at least... as similar as loaves of bread. Supposing they're different
underneath, supposing each one has her tragedies, her troubles, her own
problems... provided they don't bother _me_, what difference does it
make? _That_ will be my idea in ten years, and when I look back on
myself, as I am now, I'll... oh, it will be a case of

    '"Gently she tombs the poor dim last time
    Strews pinkish dust above
    And sighs, 'The dear dead girlish pastime!
    But _this_... ah, God!... is..."'

a really sensible point of view!'

Vicky threw back her head and laughed, then she said meditatively, 'You
and Mlle Tourain have exactly contrary points of view. I wonder which of
you is right? Both, I suppose, according to your desires and ideals. You
think this place is static and sterile, a half-world filled with shadowy
people... a wayside station, withdrawn from the world and from
reality. She thinks it's a noisy, clattering, confusing microcosm, a
kind of local Times Square and Piccadilly Circus. Unfortunately, she
doesn't want life, though, she wants a little vacuum all her own in
which to think and ponder on the lessons of history.'

'She's approaching sixty,' Mary pointed out.

Vicky shrugged. 'That hasn't much to do with it. Put her beside most of
the twenty-year-olds here... the Andersons, the Cummings-Gordons,
Rose, Henriette, almost anyone, in fact... and they pale into nothing
beside her immense vitality, her strength, and her enthusiasm. As for
Isabelle Lemaitre... she has lived avidly, passionately, generously...
at fifty-odd she's dying, but she's had more fun out of sheer
living than most other people, men and women who are husbands, wives,
parents, and who in general fulfil their existences more completely...
in the conventional sense... than she. It is an impertinence for
the world to assume so smugly that unmarried women are to be pitied,
as though the mere state of matrimony conferred blessings otherwise not
to be experienced by spinsters. I think probably those who have not
known love... in its highest and richest form, the form in which it
is pervaded by all the wisdom and experience which the two people
have... garnered... during their lives, the form in which it is a
blend and a harmony of passion and spirituality... have missed _that_
chance at greatness. But do the average husband and wife ever know
intense happiness? Look at their faces as you see them at the movies, in
tubes, in railway trains, in shops, and waiting for buses. Then look at
Isabelle Lemaitre. All you learn from the two is that an outpouring of
the spirit, an escape from the close confines of one's individuality is
essential to a full life. Most people know that instinctively, and
because love for another human being is the easiest and most obvious
answer, they marry. Or they fall in love. Or both.'

'That's a rather peculiar way of looking at it,' said Mary. 'You think
Mlle Lemaitre and the average wife are doing the same thing; in
different ways each one is seeking an outlet.'

'There's no comparison between her and the average woman. Look at her
face! Oh, I don't mean her poor nose, her chin, or her complexion...
but what there is in that face that charms you, and moves you, and gives
you brief glimpses of what life may mean to you, if you're lucky. So
might Hlose have looked at fifty-four... Incidentally, I wonder
what she did look like? Ablard, I think, was rather like Delius.'

'Would you mind very much,' said Mary rather wearily, 'staying on the
point for a while?'

'I _am_ on the point,' she said without annoyance. 'I know that for you,
with all your idealism and your simplicity, you will only love one man,
give yourself, everything that you are, have been, or ever will be, just
that once. I suppose your husband will be in possession of you as long
as he lives... perhaps that's a kind of punishment God inflicts on
those of us who are so stupid as not to value what we have. But what I'm
trying to say is that there's no real reason for you to cease growing
outward, as though love were the only outlet for your individuality.
It's because we think of marriage and babies as a sine qua non of a full
life, that so many of us... like the women in this school, just give
up when men pass them by. I grant you that it's the easiest, that it's
the most obvious... perhaps it is also the most perfect... that's
what _I_ have to discover too... but it's still not the only way.
That's all,' she added with finality, thinking that Mary expected
something more.

'It sounds very simple,' said Mary. 'It's what's called "sublimation",
isn't it?'

Vicky wrinkled up her nose. 'Yes, but that word has a holier than thou
connotation which annoys me. As though the two things were necessarily
alternatives, and sublimation the better of the two. It's not. I think
it's probably the less desirable.' She paused a moment, then said
suddenly, 'What time is it?'

'A quarter to twelve.'

'Then that leaves me fifteen minutes for Rosalie. It should have been
the other way round... fifteen minutes for you and me, and
three-quarters of an hour for Rosalie.'

'Why? Is she... so much more important?' asked Mary, looking a little
hurt.

'I think so.'

'Why?'

'Because where you and I are battling with difficulties, she is
struggling with a tragedy not of her own making; while you and I are
trying to decide what to do with our lives, she is dying.' Her voice had
dropped very low again. She was looking fixedly at the falling snow as
she went on, 'I think I'll rush over it. You'll have to try to
understand; you'll have to use a lot of imagination... but even if I
said a great deal and talked for hours, you'd either grasp it
emotionally and intuitively, almost immediately, or you never would,
though I might write whole books about it for you.' She paused again,
then asked unexpectedly, 'Do you know anything about Roman Catholic
psychology?'

'A little,' she said, looking surprised.

'Anything of the patience, the quality of endurance, and the long,
timeless upward view which is inbred in some Catholics?'

'Yes,' she said quietly. 'Something that I knew and understood better
through knowing Rosalie... because I sensed it; you can't help
sensing it, really, unless you're very intellectual in your approach to
things... than if I'd read all the books you might write on the
subject.'

Vicky glanced at her, nodded, then went on quickly and unemotionally as
though that were sufficient assurance that Mary would understand,
'Rosalie's mother is a Catholic... a French-Canadian, of course...
but without the strength and intellect required to live up to the best
in her Church. Her father, curiously enough, is a Scotch Presbyterian...
_his_ father having been French Huguenot, hence the name Garcenot,
and his mother, Rosalie's paternal grandmother, a Mc-something or other
from Edinburgh. There are, it seems to me, at least two totally
different kinds of devout Catholic... those who are purely emotional,
so that certain aspects of their religion verge on superstition, and
those, equally devout, who love the Church for its scholasticism, its
intellectual supremacy, its profoundly human wisdom. Madame Garcenot,
needless to state, is in the first category, only unfortunately, though
she hasn't enough wit to get into the second, she has too much to stay
firmly put in the first.'

'Is she at all like Rosalie?'

'Not in the least. Rosalie has spent all her life, until a year ago, in
a convent. Consequently she has... or had... the perfect devotion
and obedience to her religion which I suppose only comes through
unquestioning faith, or from a faith which has questioned everything,
and yet arrives back at the point it started from... a faith based on
supreme ignorance, or based on great knowledge... however you want to
put it. Well, anyhow, Madame Garcenot fell in love with a Parisian, head
of the Montreal branch of a French fur company. She then attempted to
adapt her religion to the life she led with her lover, and since her
religion isn't awfully adaptable, she didn't succeed. Shortly after
Rosalie's fifteenth birthday her mother's amant was recalled to Paris;
Garcenot pre left on a business trip to the west, and taking advantage
of his absence, she eloped, taking her young daughter along too.'

'But why?' demanded Mary in astonishment.

'Because she's weak... like a lot of other people, she had to have
her cake and eat it. I think, in some obscure way, she hoped to prove to
God that though she might be a bad wife, she was still a devoted mother.
She couldn't have done it to Rosalie if she really _had_ been a devoted
mother, of course.'

'But that's absurd,' said Mary, sitting on the floor with her back to
the wall on the left of Vicky's window, and looking up at her with a
puzzled expression. 'I should think she'd have left Rosalie in her
convent as salve for her conscience.'

'I don't think it's as simple as that.' She picked up a pencil from the
clutter behind her on the table, and began to draw a series of parallel
lines on the worn, dark wood. 'She's a very vain woman, and an egoist. I
think most people who do unconventional things, unless they do them from
some sincere and profound conviction, are vain or egotistical at bottom,
in their evident belief that they are different from others. Not that
that has much to do with Madame Garcenot... her vanity showed itself
in a different way. I've an idea that the real reason behind, was her
inability to face the prospect of Rosalie's being told by others that
her mother had fallen from grace, of Rosalie being instructed by the
sisters to pray for her mother's soul, and informed that one day she
must try to make Madame Garcenot return to the Church.'

'Did the three of them go to Paris?' asked Mary.

'Yes, and there, with quite remarkable dullness of perception, she tried
to give Rosalie, fresh from a convent and not yet sixteen, bewildered
and lonely as she was, a... a point of view which would not force
Rosalie to condemn her mother. I mean that what Madame Garcenot did was
to try and modernize Rosalie almost over-night. She took her about to
restaurants, shops and theatres, and generally introduced her to gaiety.
It was a rotten form of self-justification.' She was again speaking in
that detached and unemotional way which Mary found so unnerving.

'She's a stupid woman,' Vicky added coldly, a little later. 'When she
went to Paris, Rosalie knew less than nothing about life. We don't
either at that age, all these reports of sophistication and precocity to
the contrary, but she... when she was suddenly uprooted, taken away
from her convent...' Vicky paused, looking upward, her face drawn and
strained. She sighed a moment later, and went on, 'I know that place;
it's a very old building in Sherbrooke Street, which is a street of old,
grey buildings. There's a stone wall around it, with lilacs and fruit
trees showing over the top. Everything within those walls _is_
religion... I think it must sometimes seem to the girls and women there
that the whole convent is rocked in a cradle by God, for the feeling of
peace and serene faith is so pervasive... pervasive,' she repeated,
still drawing lines on the table. 'You could imagine St. Francis of
Assisi walking in the garden there, and neither time nor distance can
quite make an idea like that absurd.'

'Yes, I know,' said Mary. She was ill at ease again, for Vicky's mind
was in many respects quite alien to her own. 'What happened to Rosalie?
Why is she here?'

'She followed her mother and the man about from theatre to theatre and
restaurant to restaurant for more than six months. I don't know what she
thought about, except that she longed for her convent in Montreal, for
that life which made sense while this did not, and which drew steadily
farther and farther away from her as time passed. Her religion was so
enveloping that none of her mother's veiled hints, subtleties and almost
open statements got through to her. So that what happened in the end was
a shock which was really horrible... a shock such as neither you nor
I could ever have, because we're too much in this world, too conscious
of everything that happens to us for something to hit us suddenly,
without any warning at all. I mean that fortuitous, irrelevant or
cataclysmic events don't occur... or occur so rarely that it doesn't
affect us. Because we're observant and keyed to our environments, we see
signs of future trouble, here and there, in odd and apparently
disconnected things so that when the disaster comes, we're at least
subconsciously half-prepared for it. Things don't suddenly come at us
like a bomb from nowhere, unless we're remarkably obtuse and
insensitive. Anyone else would have sensed something, but Rosalie had
been jerked from her convent and thrown among people who wore odd
clothes, who ate queer food, who spoke her language with an unfamiliar
accent, who drank strange things, and said even stranger things, who
danced, and swore, and never mentioned God or Christ except in
blasphemy. It was all so completely alien to her that she didn't take it
in at all. If there had been any similarity between present and past
experience, it would have acted as an entering wedge, but there was
none. You see, until they went to Paris, she had hardly even known her
mother.'

Mary saw at last the emotion which she had sought in Vicky's face as she
talked about her own distorted background, which she had sought there
when talking about herself and her husband, and failed to find. It was
there now, a look of suffering in the tense muscles around her eyes and
mouth as she talked about Rosalie, the one human being with whom, Mary
thought, Vicky was really involved. 'Everyone in the school knows that
there's something on Rosalie's mind, something beyond a bad heart,
anaemia, and homesickness... something fatal. I think she's beyond
help now. She won't even talk to her confessor.'

'But why doesn't Garcenot take his daughter away? Has he lost all
interest in her?'

'He probably thinks it's about time she was put in a Protestant
boarding-school. The Scotch Presbyterian mind has absolutely no
conception of Catholicism... I don't suppose that Rosalie and her
father are intelligible to one another for more than five minutes at a
time. Besides that, Mr. Garcenot is in the somewhat dubious and shaky
position of one who deliberately closes his mind to the truth and
chooses false doctrine, so far as Rosalie is concerned. He must have
known that that was what she thought, and it would rankle with him, to
say the least.'

'But if you think she's going to die, Vicky, something has _got_ to be
done...' said Mary straining forward impatiently.

'Mlle Tourain has asked Garcenot to take her away. So far he hasn't
answered her.'

'Where's her mother?'

'On a cruise in the Mediterranean. No one knows just where.'

'Was there one specific thing? You said something about a shock, a
moment ago. What was it?'

Vicky answered slowly, removing every trace of emotion from her voice,
'Rosalie was wandering about their apartment in Paris one hot night last
summer, and she saw something which whatever deity there is who cares
for lonely, innocent young girls, should have prevented her from
seeing'. She looked down at the pencil in her hand while Mary stared at
her. 'Well,' said Vicky, looking out into the world beyond the window
again, 'That's what Rosalie thinks about. She doesn't want to live. She
wants to escape from her body which was created in sin; she wants to
escape from life because all life is rooted in carnality, and she
desires no more of it.'

'Why haven't you told Mlle Tourain that?'

'Because,' she said quietly, 'I think Rosalie should be allowed to die
in peace.'

'You think Rosalie should be allowed to die in peace?' repeated Mary
incredulously. 'How _can_ you think that? Vicky, are you mad?' she asked
in horror. 'You... you think she's dying... you know it, in fact,
and you take the responsibility for it. How can you, Vicky? You're...
you're doing something wicked... you're answering for the life of
another human being...'

Vicky's face was impassive as she said, 'Quite. You see I'm inclined to
agree with the man who said that we over-estimate the sanctity of human
life. Merely living isn't enough. She is, now, so far off the truth that
no one can bring her back, no one but God. If He does it, she'll live;
if He doesn't, she'll die. Either way,' she added, maintaining her low,
steady tone of voice with great difficulty, 'would be right. No other
way. What could we do for her?'

'I don't know. What have you done?' she asked more calmly now.

'I've... only... loved her. That was all I could do. Lately she's
learned how to slip from consciousness... or from what we think
consciousness... into another world. If you speak to her suddenly
she starts, and a look of physical pain crosses her face, only fading
away very slowly.' Vicky was struggling to prevent herself from crying
now. She searched for her handkerchief with one hand and went on, her
voice shaking, 'There are some words which Odile in _Climats_ keeps
repeating... "fatalement condamne"... "fatalement condamne"... fatally
condemned... I feel that about her. I didn't mean... a moment ago...
that I was not... trying... but, you see, it's beyond me, and I don't
feel that I have... any right. There's nothing I can do but love her,
and it's... not... enough.'




CHAPTER VII


Vicky sat through the first half of lunch in a state of abstraction,
replying rather absent-mindedly when anyone asked her a question. Her
face still looked drawn; she had been even more upset than she had
expected by that conversation with Mary. For the first time she had put
into words something which she had felt, half-believed and feared for
the past few weeks... that Rosalie would really die. Vicky was unable
to visualize any future for her; all those incidents which she had
described to Mary, everything in the girl's past, led nowhere but toward
her final destruction.

She became aware of Natalia's full, throaty voice asking impatiently,
'Why did we all behave like that to poor Ilse this morning? All of us
staring at her as though she were a criminal in the dock... I have
never been so ashamed of myself!'

'That sort of thing often happens,' said Yasha calmly. 'I mean, if you
stop in the street and stare fixedly at something, you'll have a whole
crowd collected round you staring fixedly too, in just a few moments.
Besides that, Ilse was so obviously terrified that some of us at least
looked at her out of sheer surprise.'

Vicky glanced across to the next table where Ilse was sitting listening
to some remarks of Miss Williams, smiling and nodding politely at the
Englishwoman, but plainly very nervous. Vicky frowned anxiously,
wondering how she could manage to see Ilse some time during the
afternoon. There was also Truda, and Marguerite who was being kept in
bed much against her will by Mlle Dupraix, and dosed with the inevitable
cups of camomile tea. And there was Rosalie, all alone upstairs but for
the efficient, unimaginative practical nurse whom Mlle Tourain had
engaged to look after her. Vicky sank once more into her abstracted mood
and remained oblivious to what was going on about her until Mlle
Tourain's voice, speaking her name harshly, caused her to start and
stand up with a bewildered look across the room at the headmistress.
What was this?

Mlle Tourain cleared her throat and rapped on her glass, an action which
she instantly realized was unnecessary, for the room was already silent.
She raised her eyes for a moment, looked at Vicky irritably, and said
without preamble, 'It has come to my notice that you have been bringing
cigarettes into the school. Is that true?'

'No, Mademoiselle,' she answered immediately.

There was an indescribable sound of disbelief from Mlle Dupraix who
turned in her chair at the foot of the headmistress's table so that she
could look at Vicky more easily, and said with elaborate politeness,
'You must excuse me for contradicting you, but I am under the impression
that I saw an unopened package in your purse day before yesterday.
Possibly I am mistaken, Vicky?'

Vicky said nothing for a moment. She had bought some for Cissie Anderson
on Wednesday afternoon, a fact which had completely slipped her mind a
moment before. She was aware of Cissie's studied indifference at the
next table, and half-smiled to herself. Her glance moved to Mary's angry
face, then made a swift tour round the room and returned to Mlle
Dupraix. Her face and voice were quiet; she made a little gesture of
apology with one hand and said quickly to the headmistress... she had
no intention of allowing this to develop into an argument between
herself and Mlle Dupraix... 'I beg your pardon, Mlle Tourain. I did
bring some in with me. I happened to have them since my last week-end.'

'That was three weeks ago was it not, Vicky?' the Beaux Arts mistress
cut in. She looked triumphantly at Mlle Tourain, then turned to Vicky
again. 'And it was an unopened package, I believe.'

What _was_ all this? To bring cigarettes into the school was not an
offence unless you smoked them there. They must be having her up on the
off-chance of proving indirectly that she had smoked them though they
had not caught her at it, by asking her to produce them. Which, she
thought, would be somewhat awkward because she had given them to Cissie
and she had not the slightest idea where, in the Andersons' room, they
were to be found. If, indeed, there were any left.

She said, trying to control her sudden spasm of nervousness by telling
herself that even though this was an additional count against her, they
could not expel her for it, 'Mlle Tourain knows that I do not smoke...
in the school,' she added as an afterthought, remembering her statement
that they had been left over from her week-end three weeks before.
She glanced down with a faint smile at Theodora who was making almost
audible noises of fury at this grilling of her Vicky.

'I'm afraid that's a little difficult to believe,' said Mlle Dupraix,
glancing at the headmistress with a smile which showed a certain amount
of satisfaction.

'I assure you, Mlle Dupraix...' began Vicky unwillingly.

'My dear, you might assure me that water is wet, and ice cold to the
touch, and I should not believe you...'

Theodora's self-control gave way. She shoved her chair back and ignoring
Vicky's look of alarm, burst out, 'No, of course you wouldn't. Liars
never do believe other people. I wouldn't admit a thing like that if I
were you!'

'Sit down, Theodora!' said Mlle Tourain through clenched teeth.

'I will not sit down!' she said furiously. 'Now I've started I might
just as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb anyway, and it's time someone
told you what that woman is doing to Vicky! She comes into her room
without knocking at all hours of the day and night; she hammers and
hammers at her, trying to trip her into saying something about her past
life; she takes her records away from her, drops them on the floor and
breaks them and then doesn't have the guts to tell her. You listen to
me, Mlle Dupraix, if I catch you in Vicky's room again, you'd better
send for the police because once I get started on you there won't be
much...'

'_Sit down_, Theodora!' thundered the headmistress, half-rising in her
chair.

Vicky turned round, 'Yes, _please_ Teddy. Don't you see you're making
everything much worse?'

'All right,' she muttered, and subsided into her chair. The entire
school was staring at her aghast. She jabbed a fork into her salad,
still shaking with rage.

'You will leave this school as soon as your mother can come to get you;
in the meantime you will remain within the grounds,' said Mlle Tourain
coldly.

'A fine person I'd be if I just sat here for fear someone would jump on
me, and let that woman get away with saying anything she wanted to my
best friend,' said Theodora under her breath in English.

Mlle Tourain took a sip of water, struggling to regain her self-control,
surprised to find that she was as angry with Mlle Dupraix as she was
with Theodora. She glanced across the room at Vicky, who looked really
upset for the first time since the headmistress had known her, and felt
a totally inexplicable wave of affection for the young, dark-haired girl
sweep over her. Of all the curious, unprecedented emotions she had
experienced during the past twenty-four hours, this was the strangest
and the most unhappy, for she knew that Vicky would have to go. She said
quietly and very seriously, 'Then you admit having brought cigarettes
into the school, after first denying it, but you do not admit having
smoked them, is that it?'

'Oui, Mademoiselle.' She was completely unnerved by the whole scene,
following as it did upon that conversation with Mary in the art room.
Too much had happened, too much had altered or changed, during the past
day. She knew, instinctively, that these chaotic events were bringing
her time at the school to a close. She bit her lip, then said with more
feeling than anyone in the room but Mary and Theodora had ever heard in
her voice before, so that once more they all turned to stare, 'Mlle
Tourain, I have never in my life lied in order to save myself from
anything...'

'I believe you, Vicky,' she said simply. 'Sit down and go on with your
lunch.'

Mlle Dupraix looked at the headmistress, then at Vicky across the room,
then back at the headmistress again, with astonishment, and contempt.
'One moment, Mlle Tourain. Since I began this discussion, I think it
only fair that you should allow me to prove my case...'

Mlle Tourain looked down the table at her and said in a very low voice
so that only the half-dozen girls between them could hear, 'Mlle
Dupraix, you have not yet been installed as headmistress.'

'I thought you prided yourself on a sense of justice,' she said, her
face flushing.

'I do. It frequently happens that in order to be just to one, you must
be unjust to another, so in this case I am allowing Vicky the benefit of
the doubt. Not only that, but I do not wish this scene prolonged...'

'Tell her to get those cigarettes,' said Mlle Dupraix, leaning forward
suddenly. 'Then everyone in this room will be as convinced as yourself.
I am so certain she is making a fool of you again, as she has so often
made a fool of you and the rest of us before, that I should be willing
to leave this school to-night if I am mistaken.'

'Mlle Dupraix, I must ask you to let this subject drop until later!'

She shook her head, half-smiling. Her expression said plainly, 'No, you
don't get out of it as easily as that.' She looked at the headmistress
for a moment in silence, as though she were weighing the odds, then
turned in her chair, and said, 'Go and get those cigarettes, Vicky. Get
them now.'

Vicky stood up. She looked at the headmistress who returned her look for
a moment, then dropped her eyes. Amlie Tourain could do nothing, and
the Beaux Arts teacher knew it. At last she had the headmistress where
she wanted her, knowing as she did that Mlle Tourain would not tolerate
a public difference of opinion between two members of the staff. The
morale of the school would be even more badly shaken if she and Mlle
Dupraix were to argue with each other now. The Beaux Arts teacher was
banking on that, as she banked on the headmistress's determination to
put up with anything rather than risk upsetting Jeanne d'Ormonde lying
very ill across the lake in Evian, by dismissing her. She was the sort
of human being who goes through life profiting by the goodness of
others, the headmistress thought wearily. Perhaps goodness was not the
right word; it was rather that she took advantage of those who refused
to take advantage for themselves. So she had Amlie Tourain in this
deadlock, knowing that she would not risk a loss of prestige among those
in authority, knowing that the headmistress would not protest beyond a
certain point.

She raised her eyes to Vicky's face again, gave a barely perceptible
little nod of acquiescence to the Beaux Arts teacher's order, then
dropped her eyes to her plate once more. She heard the door close behind
Vicky and waited anxiously for her return, glancing briefly at Mlle
Dupraix from time to time.

A little later she looked toward the door; that girl was taking an
uncommonly long time to find her cigarettes. Mlle Tourain's eyes
wandered to Mlle Lemaitre, whose habitual feverish flush was intensified
now by her impatience with the weak-willed headmistress; from Mlle
Lemaitre to Miss Williams who looked very distressed, from Miss Williams
to Mary Ellerton, almost beside herself with anger, from Miss Ellerton
to Frulein Lange, where they stopped. What _was_ the matter with that
woman? Was it still her sister? Why couldn't she realize that the
welfare of forty-eight young human beings depended at least partly upon
her self-control, her strength, and her self-assurance? If Frulein
Lange wished to become thoroughly useless, by fussing about her sister
many miles away in Zrich, Frulein Lange should resign. Besides that,
what _was_ there to fuss about, when you came right down to it? Heaven
only knew how many women managed to survive this ordeal; heaven only
knew how many millions of women there were in the world, with so little
intelligence that they were willing to go on producing offspring of
something like an ultimate intelligence of fourteen years or less, in
order to populate a world where everyone was mad and few attained
happiness.

Where was Vicky? Why didn't she come back with those cursed cigarettes?

The headmistress drew in her breath sharply, then let it escape in a
long sigh. She was very tired; her back was aching badly, and every
nerve, every muscle in her body seemed stretched beyond endurance. For
the first time she wondered what it was like to be old; were the final
years of life a long period of frustration during which one had to
battle with ever-diminishing mental and physical powers? Soon she would
have to summon sufficient strength to get up and walk from the room; in
the meantime she sat rather limply, asking herself what could be keeping
Vicky all this time if she had been telling the truth. She signalled to
Marthe to remove the plates. The stewed fruit was served and eaten
before the door opened, and Vicky was standing beside her.

Speaking in a voice pitched so low that Mlle Dupraix at the foot of the
table could not catch what she was saying, 'I could not find them, Mlle
Tourain, I don't know where I put them. I'm so sorry for all this.'

'You couldn't find them? But Vicky... where are they, then? If you
haven't... smoked them... they must be somewhere. You leave me no
alternative but to... not to... believe you. Really, you can't
lose a thing as easily as that...'

Vicky said nothing, buttoning and unbuttoning her sleeve, completely
shaken out of her former self-control. She could either let Mlle Tourain
down, or let Cissie down. Of the two the headmistress was incomparably
the stronger. Cissie must have been trembling with fear for the past
half-hour, terrified that Vicky would give her away, drag her into the
open, let everyone see her as she was, stare at her, point their fingers
at her, speak of her derisively... she, the oldest girl in the school...

Mlle Tourain said suddenly, without warning, 'Whom are you doing this
for, Vicky?'

'No one, Mademoiselle.'

'Are you sure?'

'Yes, Mlle Tourain,' she said, biting her lip again in an effort to
steady it.

The headmistress looked down at her plate, 'You would be doing me a
kindness if you could...' She stopped, half-smiled, and went on, 'But
I know you can't.' She looked up, and with her eyes on Mlle Dupraix who
was staring at them, and straining forward in an unsuccessful attempt to
hear what they said, she continued so quietly that her words were
inaudible to everyone but Vicky, 'You see, I don't believe you. I can
conceive of you doing almost anything, but not... not hiding in a
cupboard, or lying flat on the balcony floor, or wherever it is my girls
do their nocturnal smoking. All the same, if you haven't got them...
so that the school will know... you put me in a position which...'

'I understand, Mlle Tourain,' she said quickly.

'You've done it before. I suppose, if you're given a chance, that you'll
do it again. And I can't have it.' She did not look up to see how Vicky
had taken that, but rapped on her glass and said in her normal voice
with a return to her old rather harsh manner, 'You will not be allowed
to go out on Saturday or Sunday for one month.'

Vicky returned to her table, and sat down ignoring the puzzled glances
which came at her from all directions. She remarked after a brief
silence, 'Teddy, I love you very much, but you're an ass.'

'I know it,' said Theodora penitently.

'Still, I suppose it's partly because you're an ass that I love you very
much, so forget it.'

'That's the nearest you ever get to blaming anyone for anything, isn't
it, Vicky?' remarked Natalia.

'Look carefully and you'll see the beginnings of a halo round my head,'
said Vicky.

'You had no right, Theodora, to be so impertinent to Mlle Dupraix,'
said Frulein Lange, who was very troubled by the whole affair. 'You
Americans have too little respect for authority. It's your
individualism... you think everyone's free and equal, and if Mlle
Tourain or Mlle Dupraix can say something to you, you can say it to
them. That is not true. Don't you realize what a muddle and confusion
this school would be in if every girl talked to a member of the staff
in the way you talked to Mlle Dupraix?'

'What state of muddle and confusion would this school be in if Mlle
Dupraix talked to everyone the way she talks to Vicky?' demanded
Theodora, but looked rather apologetic a moment later.

'For that matter, what state is it in now?' asked Yasha. 'Accusing Vicky
of smoking! Everyone knows she doesn't smoke. Why didn't Mlle Tourain
take her word for it... why doesn't anyone of them ever take our word
about anything?'

'It wasn't Mlle Tourain,' said Vicky. 'It was Mlle Dupraix. But let's
drop the whole thing, shall we?'

'But as Yasha says, everyone knows you don't smoke!' said little
Maria-Teresa Tucci from the foot of the table.

'Well, they're all just a little too clever,' she said irritably. 'I've
been smoking for years, for all you may know. I don't see why it is that
Mlle Tourain or Mlle Dupraix doesn't believe me when I say one thing,
and you don't when I say another.' She looked round the table and went
on with unusual emphasis, 'I deserved no less than I got, and you and
the rest of the school ought to have the sense to see it. You'd think I
was some kind of superfatted angel the way you go on... but I'm not.
And I'm not such a good little darling that I have to be let off when
it's perfectly obvious from the facts that I don't deserve to be let
off. I was sent to get those cigarettes and I couldn't produce them.
Therefore, I'd smoked them. Now, for goodness sake let's talk about
something else.'

'Why did you deny having brought them in at the beginning?' Frulein
Lange asked curiously.

'I'd completely forgotten,' said Vicky. 'Really, I had.'

'You are funny in the head,' said Maria-Teresa. 'Pazza,' she added in
explanation. 'I don't know why it is, but sometimes, some days, it's
impossible for me to speak this abominable French language. Perhaps I am
suffering from exhaustion of the nerves?' she asked brightly.

'It's unlikely,' said Yasha. 'No one suffers from exhaustion of the
nerves unless they've nothing better to do than sit about thinking of
themselves.'

'Why Yasha, where did you ever learn about such things?' asked Frulein
Lange, looking startled.

'She reads dime novels,' said Vicky, knowing that Yasha was thinking of
her mother, who suffered from nervous disorders which only periodic
sea-voyages and periodic lovers could cure.

'And I have to live with Natalia,' said Yasha. She pushed her plate away
and went on, looking down at it, 'Natalia's now entering another week of
furniture moving. It's enough to wear anyone out. I have to spend most
of my time helping her drag the bureau across the room, or sitting on my
bed watching her drag it by herself. She does it regularly, once every
two months. She gets restless, decides she wants to be a doctor, plans
innumerable letters to her father informing him of it, and moves the
furniture around. The three things always go together.' She turned,
smiled at the Armenian girl, and said, 'I've always had an idea that if
you once wrote that letter and really posted it, our furniture would
stay where it is for a while.'

'It's not as easy as that,' said Natalia rather unhappily. 'All Armenian
girls get married... they don't study law, or medicine, or have
careers in general. You don't understand how difficult it is to break
away from family and racial tradition. Besides, my father would have a
fit. I don't know what he'd do. He'd probably marry me off right away,
and trust the rest to...'

'The nature of the beast,' said Theodora.

Across the room Mlle Tourain was preparing to leave. Her eyes travelled
impatiently from table to table to see if everyone had finished, then
fell on Rose, the little Swiss housemaid, timidly crossing the room with
the second of those dreadful telegrams to arrive that day. She paused,
caught Mlle Tourain's eye and said in her breathless little voice, 'It's
for Frulein Lange, Mademoiselle'.

'Well, give it to her then!' she said shortly, and stood up. The rest of
the school drifted out in her wake, leaving Frulein Lange with Theodora
and Vicky in the far corner of the room.

The German teacher had not noticed Rose's entrance after rising with the
others, she had delayed in order to calm down Theodora who, after
volunteering the information that she was going to see Mlle Tourain
about the Beaux Arts teacher's attitude toward Vicky, refused to listen
to any objections. The German teacher finally lost her temper and told
Theodora to mind her own business, while Vicky leaned wearily against
the table. She was very tired, and said rather dully, 'Leave the whole
thing alone, Teddy, please. I'll have to go soon anyhow. Mlle Tourain
won't let me stay if this sort of thing happens again.'

'I might just as well get it all off my chest now,' said Theodora
obstinately. 'She's going to expel me anyhow. What difference does it
make?'

'I don't think she will expel you,' said Frulein Lange. 'Not if you
behave yourself from now on. She'll probably send for you this afternoon
and give you a good talking to... perhaps make you stay within bounds
for two or three months, but that's all. It isn't as though you'd made
that scene on your own account. Mlle Tourain will take that into
consideration... not that that excuses you in any way,' she added, as
Rose came up with the telegram and handed it to the German teacher.

She ripped it open and read it. A moment later she said, her face rigid
and stiff, 'I was right, Vicky. It's kidney trouble. They've taken her
to the hospital. She's... she's... dangerously ill, Adolf says.'
Reaching up to her forehead, she shoved back a strand of brown hair in a
childish, rather pathetic gesture. 'Mlle Tourain will have to let me go
now, won't she? She can't ask me to stay here when my sister is...
perhaps... dying...'

They went out. Vicky and Theodora waited for her in the hall while she
saw the headmistress. She stood in front of the desk, twisting the belt
of her jersey with both hands as she talked. When she came to the end of
her tale she said unemotionally, 'If my sister dies, I shall not come
back. I suppose you can get another German teacher even at this time of
year, there are so many of us.'

Amelie Tourain was to remember that remark as long as she lived. Sitting
at her desk now, tapping the end of her pencil against the brass ink-pot
as she had done yesterday and the day before, as she would do to-morrow
and the day after, she thought that half the heart-sick world, buffeted
and driven through life as they were, must at some time say with tragic
simplicity, 'There are so many of us', in many different circumstances,
with many different meanings.

Frulein Lange left in a taxi half an hour later. The two girls had
packed her bag for her, as she seemed unable to make decisions or
perform specific actions. She sat in a straight-backed wooden chair with
a faded chintz-covered cushion on its seat, and looked blankly at a
photograph of the Lion of Lucerne on the opposite wall, leaving Theodora
and Vicky to choose what she should take, what she should leave behind.

In the clear, cold air of the courtyard she seemed to recover a little.
They put her into a taxi, at a loss for anything to say, and closed the
door, Theodora saying to the driver, 'She's going to Zrich on the 2.30.
You'd better see she gets safely on the train', and fished down into her
stocking which apparently held an inexhaustible store of money.

The taxi went off down the drive with Frulein Lange, who did not even
glance up at the towering, snow-laden elms on either side, nor glance
back at Pensionnat Les Ormes where for four years she had lived, and
which she was never to see again.

The two girls ran back into the house shivering, and stopped undecidedly
in the hall. 'Do you suppose it was all right for me to tell him to see
that she got on the train? She wouldn't mind, would she?' asked
Theodora, leaning with one elbow on the post at the foot of the stairs.

'She doesn't even know you did it,' answered Vicky. She glanced up the
stairs, then said, 'It's quite early still. Let's go and get some dates
from the Bonne Femme. What with one thing and another, I didn't manage
to get much lunch.'

They made their way across the empty classroom, across the stone floor
of the loggia, and down the short flight of snow-covered steps which led
to the Bonne Femme's cellar shop.

The old woman greeted them enthusiastically, hoisting herself to her
feet from her place on a barrel. 'Lovely weather, Mesdemoiselles,' she
said, including the whole long lake beyond the roofs of Lausanne in one
joyful sweep of her arm. 'So clear it is now. This morning I said to
Georges, mon fils, that it will stop... this heavy snow... exactly
on the stroke of one. He knows that at home they say "You do not need an
instrument to tell you the weather; merely consult Henriette Moussole",
but he says to me, "a, c'est bien ma mre; doubtless you knew the
weather in our little village, but the weather in a different canton
altogether... c'est autre chose. Vois-tu, we are no longer in the
mountains, and these things require to be judged otherwise..."'

'Some dates, please,' said Theodora, interrupting her, and apparently
oblivious to the old woman's look of fleeting annoyance. Vicky sat down
on the recently vacated barrel shivering a little, and looked about her.
It was a small, damp, earthen room with an improvised counter made of
two boards placed side by side supported on each end by a barrel, and
loaded with huge golden oranges, bananas, dates in yellow and red
packages decorated with camels and palm trees; figs, olives, apples
which were polished till you could see your face in them, and small
squat jars containing oysters, lobster, foie gras and marzipan.

The Bonne Femme, her face creased once more in a smile since she had
recovered from her gloomy forebodings of the night before, swept a
strand of white hair back under her lace cap and continued
imperturbably, 'He thinks, because I am a woman, I am also an idiot.
Such is the way of men, is it not?' She paused for confirmation, looking
from Theodora, who was picking up apple after apple and examining it
suspiciously, to Vicky, sitting on her barrel and watching her friend
with amusement, and wondering how long it would be before the Bonne
Femme realized that Theodora was insulting her produce.

'It is,' said Vicky, with only a rudimentary idea of what the ancient
Swiss woman was talking about.

'Young as you are, I can see that you have a knowledge of men. So I said
to George, mon fils, "That is all very well, and doubtless you are at
liberty to belittle the intelligence of your poor old mother who has not
long to live in any case..." Mlle Thodore! There is nothing whatever
wrong with those apples!' She reached forward and rapped Theodora's
knuckles with her stick. 'There! That will teach you.'

Vicky leaned back against the dirty cement wall and laughed; Theodora
retired to another barrel with an aggrieved expression, sighing gustily
at intervals while the Bonne Femme continued her interminable, rambling
tale. They would get nothing until Madame finished in her own good time;
that they knew from experience.

'...and I said to him that he would see whether I was right or not
about the weather, for it would stop snowing as the bell tolled the hour
of one from the Cathedral in Place St. Franois, en ville.' The last two
words indicated that the conversation had taken place somewhere in
Ouchy, for although it is impossible to tell where Lausanne ends and
Ouchy begins, the people who live down by the Lake of Geneva still think
of the two as separate towns. 'And I was right. At one precisely, it
stopped snowing. My son is quite toqu lately; he thinks of marrying one
of these Vaudoises, when I tell him that he should take a girl from the
mountains who knows a little something besides lipstick, the fashion in
clothes, and the cinma... Une de ces sacres Vaudoises!' she
repeated derisively, and spat on the hard earth floor.

They accomplished their buying at last and fled up the stone steps into
the house, Vicky remarking vaguely as they climbed the stairs to
Consuelo's room on the second floor, 'Isn't it funny how people _will_
subdivide themselves, no matter how little space they have? In my
country we're all split up into provinces so that politically it's
impossible to get united action... I mean that the Federal government
decides to put through some piece of progressive legislation and
immediately the people of Alberta, or Nova Scotia, or whatever it is,
get up and object. The result is that the welfare of the people depends
on a lot of little, short views, instead of one long one. The little
short views are never alike either, so that advancement is very
difficult. I suppose Switzerland would fit nicely into one corner of
Ontario, yet they divide themselves up into Cantons, in order to indulge
in what would be provincialisms in Canada...'

Consuelo opened the door in answer to their knock. They crossed the room
to the bed where Marian was lying between the window and the balcony
door. Theodora dropped down beside her and said with concern, 'How are
you feeling to-day, Mouse? Any better?'

She shook her head. 'Not much.'

'Aren't you going to get up so that you can go out with Con and Juan
to-morrow?' she asked, as though she were coaxing a small child.

'I don't feel like going out, Teddy,' she said in her low-pitched,
rather flat voice. She looked transparent in the brilliant afternoon
sunlight; she was ordinarily without natural colour but surrounded by
all that brightness of sun and snow, white woodwork and flowered
wall-paper, her face appeared thinner, paler and more lifeless than
ever. Her cheek-bones were high, her eyes pale blue and her hair soft,
fine and dun-coloured, held in place now by a white silk ribbon across
her head. She was lying on her back with three pillows under her head
and shoulders, a pale blue shawl hiding her nightdress.

Theodora went off on an elaborate, inaccurate but very amusing account
of Vicky's and her own misdemeanours at lunch. Vicky sighed, looked
affectionately at Theodora and said, 'Don't believe a word of it,
Mouse', then retreated to the other side of the room where Consuelo was
sitting on the bed shelling peanuts, with a waste-basket held between
her knees. Vicky took a handful and fell to helping her.

Under cover of Theodora's pleasant St. Louis drawl and the crackling of
peanut shells, Consuelo asked anxiously, 'What am I going to do with
her, Vick? I told Miss Williams about her to-day, and she said that if
Marian would even get up to-morrow morning, she thought Mlle Tourain
would let her go out with us though she wouldn't ordinarily allow anyone
to go straight from bed to town, because she wants us all to have a
change of scene. She's sending all the girls who haven't anyone to go
out with to the movies. But Marian _won't_ get up!'

Vicky glanced at the Brazilian girl's beautiful, slender face with its
frame of lovely fair hair, then across at Marian, spiritless and silent
against her pillows, and was touched again by Consuelo's loyalty to her
room-mate. 'I suppose if she stays there much longer she won't be able
to get up. She'll be _really_ ill after another fortnight of no
exercise, no food, no sleep. She was anaemic to start with, wasn't she?
She's always looked it, anyhow.'

'Yes,' Consuelo said hopelessly for one of her even and well-balanced
temperament. 'I'll have to try and explain it to Mlle Tourain if she
goes on like this much longer. She won't talk to me... I mean Marian
won't. She won't tell me why she's doing it... although of course I
know why. Still, she doesn't confide in me now the way she used to. She
just went to bed the day she got that letter from her mother, without
saying anything except that she didn't feel well. Two years more...
it seems such a long time to us, when we're so young, and there's no
_reason_ for it! I mean, if they sent her to a university, it would be a
different thing, but here... well, it seems almost as though it were
a convenient and simple way of getting rid of some of us. I know Mr. and
Mrs. Comstock _can't_ get away for two years, but Marian should be sent
somewhere that's... not just a matter of marking time, that's all. I
mean it seems so stupid and so unkind. She just can't face it. I have an
idea that she thinks it's a sort of bad dream, and that so long as she
stays in bed she can keep it away from her... prevent it from
becoming real. As soon as she starts off on the school routine again, it
will be there, two whole years of it, stretching as far as she can see.'

'Why don't you put the whole thing up to Mlle Tourain?' asked Vicky.

'Mlle Tourain!' said Consuelo scornfully. 'All she'd do would be to come
and sit on the edge of Marian's bed and tell her how much she'll enjoy
being at Gstaad skiing and skating just like any other healthy, bouncing
young ten-year-old. And a lot of good that would do her!' She shelled a
few more peanuts, glanced over at Marian again, and went on, 'She's
tired out. They dose her with cod liver oil, but it doesn't do any
good'. If you could have seen her when she came two years ago, Vicky! I
wish you could have seen her...' She raised her eyes momentarily,
smiling at that image of Marian as she had been, then tossed a peanut
into the bowl at her feet and picking up another one, cracked it between
her long, slender fingers, a discouraged look on her usually composed
face. 'Really boarding-schools are about the most irrational and
illogical places yet devised by man. When there is such an
inter-dependence between men and women, why in the name of common sense
are we segregated from one another in this way? Take me, for example. My
men friends are as essential to me as my women friends. No one would
expect me to develop properly in some remote colony surrounded entirely
by men, so why am I expected to flourish in an atmosphere which is
entirely feminine? The theory seems to be that I am living a life
natural to those not yet of a marriageable age... I'm only twenty, so
it doesn't matter... which is the greatest rot, because it's putting
a heavy, negative emphasis on sex. I need men because I'm alive, and
because they are as much a part of my life as women. And _that's_ what
is wrong with Marian. We might just as well be realistic about it, as
try to fool her and ourselves into believing that all she needs is a
little skiing and skating, and some nice "wholesome" occupation to take
her mind off herself. She's drying up here. Santa Maria, she hasn't been
away from this half-world for two years!'

On the other side of the room Theodora was saying, 'She knew perfectly
well Vicky doesn't tell lies, but she gets all her ideas about running a
school from books. Vicky's just case 5f; sec. 240; vol. 19; ch. 62; page
7642, calling for the firm hand, the unemotional tone of voice, the
quiet ultimatum, the...'

'I wish you didn't have such a one-track mind,' said Vicky, sighing.
'You start on one idea and nothing on earth will get you off it. Why
don't you turn it to some useful purpose?'

'I have just such a purpose in mind,' she said with dignity. 'Sooner or
later I'll have worn you down to a point where you'll tell me who you
got them for.' She was sitting with her hands clasped around her knees,
immaculate and well-groomed as always in a brown woollen dress with a
necklace of coarse, emerald-green glass. 'Sooner or later,' she repeated
menacingly.

Vicky laughed. 'But it wouldn't do you any good if you did know, Teddy.'

'Yes, it would. I should intervene.'

'How would you intervene?'

'I should reason with the girl. I should put my hand on her shoulder and
say gently, "Wouldn't it have been a finer and better thing if you had
owned up?" and if that didn't have any effect, I should continue, still
without raising my voice and still speaking gently, "Well, whether or
not you think it would be a finer better thing, you'll go and tell Mlle
Tourain it was you and not Vicky, or I'll hamstring you, dear heart".'

'Oh,' said Vicky, unimpressed.

Consuelo said, as Theodora and Marian began to talk about Frulein
Lange, 'She just adores you, doesn't she, Vick?'

'She's a combination watch-dog, lady companion and keeper,' said Vicky.
'Way down at the bottom of Theodora's heart is a conviction that I'm one
of the most injured, maligned and incompetent people who ever lived. She
does me more good than anyone I've ever known, though. I think I'm just
as fond of her as she is of me; I hope she knows that. You know,' she
continued thoughtfully, leaning with one elbow on Consuelo's pillow, 'it
annoys me sometimes to realize that so few people here really do justice
to her. That sounds silly, and I suppose it's inevitable that she should
be under-estimated. Purely as a spectacle, she's fascinating, because
she's afraid of nothing. I thought at lunch how impossible it would be
to run this school... any school... to run society, any society...
if it were composed entirely of people like Ted. The world would
be anarchic and chaotic if everyone, like Ted, feared nothing. If she
had wanted to go on with her outburst at lunch, she'd have gone on with
it, and nothing short of knocking her out or murdering her could have
put a stop to it. How frightful life would be if we were all like that!
In general she plays the game according to the rules because she sees
that it's the only way in which so many people can manage to live
comfortably without too much discord. But there comes a time... I
suppose it will happen again during her life... when she decides that
the rules are not the essential thing at the moment, so she throws them
over and does what she likes. And the only way of controlling her is to
prove to her that she's being unreasonable; no kind of threat has any
effect at all. She's going to have an interesting life, Con, to say the
least of it. I wouldn't be surprised at anything she did.'

'No,' said Consuelo, 'neither would I. But gosh, what a temper!' She
whistled appreciatively, then said a moment later, 'You know, I never
thought of that before... I mean the sheer fright which underlies
society.'

'What are you two talking about?' asked Theodora from the other side of
the room.

'Your beastly disposition,' said Consuelo.

'Oh,' said Theodora. 'Damn my beastly disposition!' she added after a
brief pause. 'Look at the mess it's got me into. Do you suppose Mlle
Tourain will really throw me out?'

'No,' said Consuelo. 'I've seen her do that before. She'd never throw
anyone out for sticking up for another person. If you'd done it on your
own account, or if Mlle Dupraix had been a little less poisonous, no
doubt she would have. But don't tell me you're afraid of being
expelled!'

'Expelled!' she said contemptuously. 'What difference does that make to
me? I did the only thing I could have done and still look at my angel
face in the mirror without blushing. I don't care what other people
think of me so long as I don't agree with them. No, being expelled
doesn't matter... it's Vick I'm thinking about.' She glanced over at
Vicky on the bed, with a worried expression. 'Vick, left to her own
devices, hasn't even enough sense to come in out of the rain.'

'You see?' murmured Vicky to Consuelo.

'Well,' said Theodora, shrugging, 'I guess I'll just have to hang around
Lausanne until Vick is dispatched to join me.'

'What about your mother?' said Marian.

'My what? Oh, you mean Mrs. Cohen... she doesn't really come into
it.' She got up and went over to the window, looking impatient and
unhappy. A moment later she turned and said, brightening a little,
'Let's go out and get some skiing... come on, Vick. You too, Con.'

Consuelo hesitated, looking doubtfully at Marian, who raised her head a
little and said, 'Go along, Con. It will do you good', then relaxed
against her pillows again.

Vicky shook her head. 'I can't,' she said. 'I'm on my way to Rosalie. By
the way, how's Ilse?' she asked Consuelo, who was keeping an eye on the
little Saarlander as well as on her room-mate.

'Fairly nervy,' she answered shortly, walking over to her cupboard. 'She
could hardly be anything else. I'm glad they're going to get to the
bottom of this nasty stealing to-morrow.'

'There ought to be some way of doing it besides calling in a city
detective,' said Vicky, fluffing up the thick, light duvet on Consuelo's
bed. 'I don't think it's a bit sensible. Some of the younger girls...
my room-mate, for example... are simply dreading it. It's too...
melodramatic... too drastic.'

'My sweet innocent,' said Consuelo, lifting down her red ski-suit, 'the
man won't third-degree us. I'll bet he'll be scared to death and crimson
with embarrassment.'

'They don't know that, though,' said Vicky, one hand on the door. She
glanced at the three of them, 'Well, au revoir, my children. Don't break
your neck, Teddy. I may get down for a while after tea if you're still
out then.'

She stopped at Anna von Landenburg's room on her way to see Rosalie, and
knocked softly. The Bavarian girl opened the door and sank back against
the frame, leaning against it with her hands behind her. 'Oh, hello,
Vicky', she said, smiling.

'You ought to be in bed, Anna.'

'I was but I... I got too restless to stay there any longer. I'll go
back after tea, if Mlle Dupraix doesn't come back in the meantime and
start fussing, and peppering me with questions, and talking her head off
again. How's Marian? I heard you talking in there as I went past on my
way to Ilse's room.'

'She's looking pretty badly. Consuelo's terribly worried about her.'
Vicky raised her eyes to Anna's face, then looked down at the floor
again. She was standing with her back against the wall opposite Anna's
door, so that her feet and legs blocked the narrow passage. Elsa and
Christina passed on their way down to the rink. The hall was dark, with
a splash of light where the sun came through Anna's open door.

'Won't you come in, Vicky?' she asked. 'I'd like a chance to talk to you
if you are not too busy.'

'I can't,' she said quickly. 'I'm on my way to see Rosalie. Is there
anything special?'

'No...' she said hesitatingly. 'Just... one thing. I... I don't
want to seem to be... poking my nose into other people's affairs, but
Mlle Dupraix has been in and out of my room all day... you know,
bringing me dozens of cups of camomile tea and hot water bottles and
things, and she's never stopped talking. She seems all wound up about
something, particularly since lunch.'

'There was a row in the dining-room.'

'Yes, I know, Ilse told me. Anyhow, she came in about an hour ago and
said, "Well, I suppose you don't know anything more about that girl than
the rest of us". She was nervous; in fact just fuming about something...
I suppose it was the business at lunch, then she said, "We'll all know
soon, at any rate". I asked her what she meant. She said that there
was a Canadian teacher here once who came from Toronto... she left
about five or six years ago, I think. Anyhow, Mlle Dupraix has been
keeping up some sort of correspondence with her since and apparently
she's written... at the beginning of December...' Anna stopped.

'To see what she can find out about me,' said Vicky.

'Yes.' And a moment later, 'I don't know how anyone could be so unkind.'

She bit her lip and said, 'Oh, well, I suppose there'll be others...
often... who'll do that.' She looked up at Anna again, and went on.
'Tell me something. Is there the slightest use in trying? You're beaten
before you start, anyhow, there are so many odds against you. Funny, I
thought I could stand just about anything...' she went on,
half-smiling, though her voice was shaking, 'but I don't believe I want
to have Mlle Dupraix make a public exhibition of me. I've got to get out
before that happens.' She began to cry in spite of herself. 'I suppose
they're all right... I never should have come. It's a bit late in the
day to try to live... like... other girls.' She mopped at her eyes
with the handkerchief Anna handed her in silence, then said, 'I can
think of better places than hallways to enjoy a good cry over spilt
milk'. A moment's pause, then, with sudden alarm, 'For goodness sake,
Anna, don't let on to anyone about this, will you?'

'Why?' she asked, astonished at Vicky's abrupt change of tone.

'Because if Ted comes to hear of it... Oh,' she said weakly,
subsiding against the wall again, 'Words fail me.'

'You really are the most amazing person,' said Anna. 'If you weren't
so... easily hurt... and if you didn't mind things so terribly, I
could understand you... but I don't. If you were a Catholic...'

'Some day you might try and convert me.'

'No,' she said, her face serious. 'I wouldn't be so impertinent.'

Vicky straightened up. She shook her head slightly, as though she were
trying to clear away her unhappy and confused thoughts. There was no use
in worrying about herself now when she had so many other people on her
mind. She said with quick concern, 'How are you, Anna?'

'I think I'm all right. I'm... depressed. It's probably just fatigue,
I don't know. I'm not thinking of those crazy things since last night...
those... ugly scenes I told you about. The Cardinal, and that street
in Knigsberg... they don't bother me now. I'm sick at heart, I don't
know why.'

'You're worn out, Anna.'

'No, it's not that... I'm not worn out. I'm really very strong...
I've never been ill. I feel that there's no hope... I can't tell you
when that feeling came over me. I woke up with it in the middle of the
night. There doesn't seem to be any use in even praying for my father
now... although of course I have been, all day.' She rubbed her eyes
in her tired, perplexed way. 'I know I'm never going to see him again,'
she said with such quiet certainty that no contradiction was possible.
'What's the use in trying to do what he's doing? We'll not get anywhere.
The whole world is mad, rolling backwards, and sometimes I think we're
farther from God than we were two thousand years ago.' Her eyes were
following a crack along the floor. She looked up at last. 'Even my
Blessed Virgin seems to have deserted me,' and turned her head so that
her fine, delicate features were outlined against the light. She stared
at the icon, dull and faded in the sunlight. 'You see, she doesn't live.
You wouldn't even know the lamp was lit.' Her eyes came back to Vicky's
face, wavering uncertainly.

'She does live, Anna,' said Vicky simply, as though she were talking to
a child, and brushing past her, she went over to the window and pulled
the curtains nearer together. 'Now look,' she said. 'You see, she's
begun to glow again to prove to you that she _is_ alive, Anna... she
_is_ alive.'




CHAPTER VIII


Rosalie lay on her back with only one pillow under her head. Above her
bed on the wall was a plain ebony cross; on the table beside her a small
blue bowl which Vicky and Theodora kept filled with sweet peas. The room
was on the west side of the house, warmly and gently illuminated now in
the late afternoon sun. The air of stillness which always pervaded it
was enhanced by the mellow light so that Vicky, sitting by the bed with
her feet propped on the rung of her chair, found it more difficult than
ever to realize that she was still in the school. The atmosphere which
surrounded the little Canadienne worried the other girls; though they
might rush through her door laughing and talking, their voices gradually
subsided and they grew more and more ill at ease as the minutes passed.
They came because they were kind-hearted, but were glad to escape again.
Even Anna's visits were short, for she found the mysticism which she
sensed in Rosalie disturbing, and tinged with a spiritual passion which
frightened her. Vicky's temperament, however, was such that she was able
to sit motionless and silent, thinking her own thoughts, without
becoming either restless or nervous.

Rosalie had said almost nothing since Vicky's arrival almost an hour
before; she seemed to be trying to clarify some idea in her mind, her
eyes wandering about the room. Vicky leaned back in her chair at last
and smiled at her. 'Talk to me, Rosalie,' she said. 'Tell me how you
are.'

'I'm well enough, thank you,' she answered, her glance flickering
half-unseeing across Vicky's face. She turned her head so that she could
look at Vicky more easily and said in her quiet, almost breathless
voice, 'I go to the Catholic Hospital to-morrow, Vicky. Dr. Laurent
decided this morning'. She stopped and waited, her eyes searching
Vicky's face as though she were seeking reassurance.

'Are you glad, my sweet?' she asked in the gentle, unobtrusive voice
with which she always spoke to Rosalie.

'I don't know.' She turned her head away again and raised one thin hand
to brush away her dark hair from her forehead. Her small face was white,
her shadowed black eyes glowing unnaturally. 'It's my heart now. I heard
them, outside the door...'

'Heard whom, Rosalie?' Vicky asked with no change of tone.

'Mlle Tourain and the doctor. I was not supposed to hear, but you
know... that door... it doesn't close unless you lift it up a little,
and it slipped open while they were talking outside it...'

'What did they say?'

'They said I might live a year, Vicky.' Her eyes came back to Vicky's
face and remained there with that curious trust which she had in Vicky,
and in no one else but the Mother Superior of her convent in Montreal.

'If you wanted to live, darling, I'm sure it would make a difference.'
She spoke rather tentatively, without emphasis; she knew, intuitively,
that she must not make the mistake of expressing an opinion about what
Rosalie _ought_ to do or think.

'I don't,' she said. 'Even a year is too long, though he... Dr.
Laurent... evidently thinks that that's unlikely.' Her mind was
clearly not on what she was saying; she seemed to be only half-listening
to her own voice. She was staring at the door on which was pinned a
reproduction of the Christ from the Last Supper which Vicky had brought
her from Milan. She had bitterly regretted the gift soon after Rosalie
had asked to have it pinned up where she could see it without having to
turn her head. The face was faint with all its colours washed by time,
disembodied, tragic and resigned. Vicky had found herself thinking a
hundred times as she sat and watched Rosalie look at it in silence, that
the picture had the same effect on her as the spinning silver ball which
some hypnotists use to put their subjects into a trance. The girl would
lie still and look at it unblinkingly until her eyes were glazed, and
Vicky knew that if she spoke her name suddenly she would start and look
ill, then wrench herself away from it with difficulty, as though
dragging herself back from unconsciousness.

Vicky was afraid that Rosalie would escape her again, and that she would
be forced to spend the remainder of this visit in a silence which, for
the first time, she found very troubling. Her mind was in a turmoil
which was unfamiliar to her; the news of that letter which Mlle Dupraix
had written set a definite limit on her time at the school, and in a few
weeks, or a few days, she would have to go. Where she would go, she did
not know. Then there was also Anna, whose quiet desperation might so
easily indicate a turn for the worse in her father's anxious life; Mary,
Ilse, Ina, and Marian. Apart from the desolation of leaving the school
which she loved, the idea of deserting the few human beings to whom she
was of some use was impossible to face. Rosalie might very well die on
the day she left the school. Her life now hung on a single thread, her
relationship to Vicky, who alone had the power to translate the things
of this life into terms she could understand. Her sole connection with
the world which surrounded her lay through the dark-haired girl sitting
beside her so quietly now. She had only that one link; the rest lay too
far behind her, on the other side of the immense gulf which those eight
months in Paris had created.

'Vicky,' she said suddenly, forcing herself to talk again, 'Is there
anything I won't have... there... which I still have here, in this
world? Most people do not want to die because of all the things which
they must leave, but for me, what is there?'

Although she knew that anyone else would have answered, 'You cannot know
because you haven't yet begun to live,' Vicky could not say it, lacking
the conviction that it was true. She had, less than most people, the
sense of time which makes it possible for them to count a full, rounded
life in so many years, months, weeks and days. With a wisdom which was
purely intuitive she knew that a life may be lived to its end in a day,
or even an hour, though years may pass before the hour of actual death.
Rosalie had known her years of peace, and serenity and trust; her months
of terror and bewilderment, only in the end to have the vital stem of
her being choked off in one night. There was that break in the
continuity of her mental and spiritual existence which no extension, no
prolonging of physical experience could heal. Sitting in her small,
straight-backed chair Vicky thought that if God kept a record of His
children, He must have written 'Finish' under the name of Rosalie
Garcenot on the twenty-eighth of August, nineteen hundred and
thirty-five.

She said at last, 'Your religion teaches that one ought not to hope for
death, Rosalie.'

'But I have no duty to anyone. No one wants me.' She turned her eyes
away from Vicky's face again, and went on with an effort, 'Soeur
Catherine used to say that I should one day grow up, and then it would
be my duty to... to... help my mother in every way I could...
by example, rather than by precept.'

It was one of her convent phrases which never failed to disturb Vicky a
little. The words called up images of cloisters, of high, sweet voices,
of the nuns walking two by two... strangely alien to their noisy,
modern surroundings of city streets and city people... of the vast
and eternal Church.

Rosalie was too exhausted to-day, she knew that by the way she spoke;
her sentences were slow, hesitating and difficult, as though she had
been so far from the earth that she had lost touch with it, and had to
feel her way even in ordinary speech. She went on a moment later, still
with that troubled, restless look which Vicky had not seen in her
before, 'Surely Soeur Catherine would not ask me to stay with my mother
and... with... with them?'

'I don't think so,' she answered simply, moving her chair a little so
that she could look out the window. 'It's so lovely out there, darling.
Wouldn't you like to go with me somewhere this summer? Somewhere that's
beautiful and quiet, so that you could get strong and well again.'

'I want to go back to the Sisters,' she said, glancing at the window,
then turning her face away from the light again. 'Do you know what I see
now as I lie here, Vicky?'

'No, darling,' said Vicky.

She looked toward the picture on the door again and was silent for a
moment. Then she said slowly, 'I see Soeur Catherine, walking up and
down.' She looked at Vicky and continued more rapidly, 'The walls of the
convent face each other on one side... the side that looks toward
Mount Royal. There's a sort of... of... square,' she added and
with a visible effort to be more comprehensible went on, 'I mean that
from the window of my room I could see the parapet along the opposite
wall. There was a long narrow space there with a low, iron railing along
the outer edge... it made a sort of balcony. Soeur Catherine used to
walk up and down there, looking out towards Sherbrooke Street. She used
to walk very fast with her skirts swinging out behind her, then stop
suddenly, gripping the railing with both hands for a minute, looking
straight down four stories to the courtyard where the statue of the
Virgin Mary is, then she would start to walk again. I saw her there
often when I woke up at night.'

'What was she like... Soeur Catherine?' asked Vicky.

'Like? She was... she was a little frightening. I used to feel...
awkward, and silly when I looked at her, but I'd have done anything she
wanted. Soeur Catherine was a saint, the girls said. She was not worldly.
The other nuns envied her... no, envy is not the word I want...
but they wished they were like her, for she had never been anything but
a nun.' She looked upset and bit her lip as she stared at Vicky and
through her to the nun walking along the parapet. 'I'm so sorry, I say
everything wrong.'

'Do you mean that she had always lived in the convent, ever since
childhood?'

'Yes,' she answered, with a long sigh of relief. She became more and
more easily shaken as time went on; Vicky had seen how, from one week to
the next, small perplexities took hold of her and worried her. 'Since
she was four. So you see, she could know nothing of the outside world,
and nothing of evil.'

'No,' said Vicky. 'What happened to her?' There was something else in
this, she could see that as she watched Rosalie's face.

'She died,' said Rosalie dully. Her look of sudden animation, which had
appeared as she described the sisters and the convent, was gone; she
seemed spent and flattened back on her pillow.

'She was ill?'

'No, she just died. That was all we were told. She was at vespers one
evening, then we never saw her again. Next morning the Mother Superior
said that she was dead.' Her breath began to come in gasps and she said
with sudden urgency, 'I want to sit up. Please, Vicky, help me up...'

Vicky got up and bending over her with one hand under each shoulder,
said uncertainly, 'You're not supposed to sit up this week...'

'Yes... yes, I know, but I want to sit up...' She spoke with such
surprising force that Vicky raised her almost to a sitting position,
putting under her head and shoulders the pillows from the other bed.
Rosalie smiled faintly. 'I feel as though something's lying on me like a
heavy weight when I'm flat on my back, sometimes. I remember once when I
was about twelve, I became hysterical, I don't remember what it was
about now. I lay on my bed and thrashed about and I was almost beside
myself. Soeur Catherine came in and held me down with one hand on my
chest... it was the same feeling. I've had it from time to time ever
since. Vicky, I'm so afraid sometimes...' She reached out and took
Vicky's hand, holding it in a painfully tight grasp, 'I don't know what
it is I'm afraid of. I lie here, day after day, and I don't want to go
on living because I'm so tired. But I know I'm not good and I'm going to
die... it's not that, though, for I do not fear death... it's
something else. Sometimes I feel as though I am very far from God...
I seem... like a person in a dream... looking for something they
can't find, trying to touch something which always escapes before you
can quite reach it.'

Vicky said nothing. She continued to sit and watch the sad, anxious
little face on the pillow while Rosalie stared straight in front of her,
holding her hand as though for safety. Vicky's other hand was gripping
the side of her chair as she sought about in her mind for something...
just one small thing... which she might recall to Rosalie in order
to bridge that gap between her years of serenity, and her months
of confusion. Vicky had very little knowledge of Rosalie's childhood;
she knew that the Garcenot's house had stood half-way up the mountain,
that from its windows you could see over the smoking city and beyond the
St. Lawrence River for fifty miles south-west toward Lake Champlain,
south to Vermont, and south-east toward Lake Memphramagog. The mountains
across the river lay against the horizon, long, blue and mysterious in
the distance. Nearer at hand was the St. Lawrence with its ships going
westward into the heart of the continent, and eastward down to the sea,
winding its way across the wide, flat valley, a white, curving expanse
in winter and a band of bluish silver when the ice went out. But Rosalie
had no associations with those physical surroundings which Vicky could
recall to her memory, and the life she had led in her convent school
existed only in her own mind, beyond Vicky's reach and separated now
from Rosalie herself. She had said once, 'It's as though I were on a
long pilgrimage, and had an immense chasm to cross which, when I had
crossed it, was too wide for me to be able to look back and see the
place I had come from, except very indistinctly, like a land in the
mist.'

That land in the mist, her convent in Sherbrooke Street, where she had
known God and the reality of Christ, was now gradually eluding her,
destroying her composure and putting a terrible strain on her faith.
These many months she had been living on the memory of a spiritual
affirmation which was slowly ceasing to have any reality, as it faded
farther and farther into the past. Because she was so young, and her
heart still so childish, her concept of God could not be without a large
element of time, and place, and circumstance, and was dependent upon her
recollections of things now lost.

Vicky remembered her first sight of Rosalie as long as she lived. The
girl had been standing in the hall waiting to be admitted to Mlle
Tourain's study with that quiet, self-contained patience in her attitude
which distinguishes many convent-bred girls. Coming down the back stairs
Vicky had stopped; she remembered leaning against the banister and
watching her, struck by the melancholy cast of the child's face and her
quiet, patient bearing.

During the day and the night before Christmas, Rosalie had said a
thousand Aves, oppressed by her sudden realization that Vicky was as
alone in the world as herself, and determined to make some return for
all that Vicky had done for her. She knew that if she could say a full
thousand, she would be granted anything she asked, and had intended to
beg the Holy Virgin to send her back to the convent in Sherbrooke
Street. She had barely completed the first dozen when the image of Vicky
rose up in her mind, and she cast aside the idea of requesting something
for herself. She tried to think of the best thing to ask as she intoned
her last Ave... 'Dominus tecum benedicta tu in mulieribus et
benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus...' What did Vicky need most?
What could little Rosalie Garcenot do for her to show that she was
grateful? 'Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis... nobis peccatoribus, nunc et
in hora mortis nostrae...' In the end she had asked the Holy Virgin
to see that Vicky was happy... 'You know, Holy Mother, she is already
very good, so I don't need to ask that.'

Her mind was more occupied with Vicky than Vicky herself ever realized;
often during those hours of silent companionship Rosalie was not
thinking of herself at all. Sometimes she was half-praying that the
quiet girl sitting beside her would never be hurt, sometimes her mind
went back to her first sight of Vicky, watching her from the shadows of
the back staircase, then coming forward with that curiously unobtrusive
manner of hers and asking, 'Is there anything I can do for you?' She had
known then that Vicky was her friend.

She turned her head suddenly and said, with her eyes appearing to look
through Vicky into that future in which she saw Vicky alone, after her
death, 'I can't tell you how much you've done for me.'

Vicky shook off her preoccupation with Rosalie's background... she
was still trying to visualize the interior of the convent, to lose
herself in its atmosphere as she imagined it to be, with a lack of
success which made her impatient... and said, 'Don't think about
that, darling.'

Rosalie smiled and said, looking at the ceiling, 'I was telling Teddy
about that one day last week, and she taught me a little poem... it's
in English... to say to you.' Her eyes came back to Vicky's face
again. 'Would you like to hear it? My English isn't very good, but Teddy
said that I'd got it quite well.'

'Yes, say it for me...'

She looked up at the ceiling again, and repeated very slowly and
carefully, like a little girl:

    '"I'll keep a little tavern
      Below the grey-eyed crest
    Wherein all high hill's people
      May sit them down and rest.

    There shall be plates a-plenty
      And mugs to melt the chill
    Of all the grey-eyed people
      Who happen up the hill.

    There sound will sleep the traveller
      And dream his journey's end,
    But I will rouse at midnight
      The falling fire to tend.

    Aye, 'tis a curious fancy--
      But all the good I know
    Was taught me out of two grey eyes
      A long time ago."'

She did not know that Vicky was crying, and remarked with her pathetic
simplicity, 'Of course, the last line isn't right because it's not "a
long time ago", but now, and during the past three months.' There was a
brief silence. She went on a moment later, 'I don't know what I'd ever
have done without you, Vicky. I wish they wouldn't take me away from
you, and send me to a strange place and strange people. I've never been
in a hospital. What is it like? Will they come and ask me questions?'

'I don't think so, darling. The sisters there may be just like the
sisters in your old convent.'

'But it's not the same. I don't know how to explain it, but hearing
suddenly that I'm going to be moved, has brought me back... I mean
that I... I seem to be living in the world again... and that I've
got to try and...' She stopped, shaking her head hopelessly, at a
loss to know how to make herself intelligible. She turned her head again
and looked almost imploringly at Vicky, 'I'll have to talk to people,
and tell them things... won't I?'

'I don't think so, darling,' she said again.

'I wouldn't mind so much if you were going with me.' She thought, if
only they'd let Vicky come so that I shouldn't be alone, for she _could_
not talk any more. Her exhausted mind was unable to face the prospect of
further explanations; she did not want people looking at her curiously,
pityingly, trying to understand. During the past three months she had
slowly succeeded in throwing off the limitations of the physical world
which surrounded her; now, with the discovery that she was to be moved
into an unfamiliar environment where she would once more be forced to
adapt herself to strange people and strange things, God had taken away
her mental refuge and left her alone in the world again. Something like
panic took possession of her as she tried to make herself believe that
He had not forgotten little Rosalie Garcenot.

Her grip on Vicky's hand slowly tightened as she began to pray in a
final attempt to escape from herself, 'Hail, Mary, full of grace...'
What came after that? 'Ave Maria, gratia plena... Ave Maria, gratia
plena...' Her mind was blank. Even the Holy Virgin was far away, lost
somewhere in the past. She repeated the four words again, her forehead
damp with perspiration, 'Hail, Mary, full of grace...'

It was at this moment that Mlle Dupraix knocked on the door. She
entered, unnoticed by either of them; when she spoke Vicky started, and
Rosalie bit her lip in a spasm of nervousness. She heard the Beaux Arts
teacher say to Vicky, 'Mlle Tourain wants to see you in her study,
immediately', and saw Vicky getting up, freeing her hand from Rosalie's
grasp.

She said, in a voice which seemed to Rosalie to be very faint, 'I'll be
back in a minute, dear', as the door closed behind them.

She continued to lie motionless for a while gripping the sheets with
both hands. She was trying to remember her Ave still.

'Hail, Mary, full of grace...' she said again, but the other words
would not come. She could remember nothing, nor experience once again
the relief and happiness of knowing that she was not alone. She looked
about the empty room, as though seeking visible proof of God's presence,
but there was nothing there. Beyond her frantic efforts to remember, her
mind was filled with scenes from her childhood, and beyond those again
was the figure of a nun walking along the parapet to the very edge where
only a low iron railing separated her from the stone courtyard four
stories below...

She saw a tall thin man sitting in a chair reading a book, and two
people, a woman and a child, standing in the doorway. The child's eyes
were fixed on the man; she was trying to summon sufficient courage to
ask him to come with them, but she turned away at last in answer to a
slight pull from her mother, and went out of the door, leaving him there
alone. From the city below as they walked down the drive came the sound
of innumerable bells tolling Mass. It was Lent, and yet the man had
eaten meat on both Wednesday and Friday.

There were apple trees blossoming in the convent garden; the Mother
Superior had given her a small plot of ground by the stone wall where
she was digging. She wanted to grow enough flowers to keep the altar
beautiful all summer, and was busy planting seeds. There was a slight
breeze, and the blossoms kept drifting down into her shallow furrows.
She stopped digging at last and turned to look up into the heart of the
tree from which they came, and remained lost in her dream until another
bell rang.

Both those scenes faded at the sound of a bell. She remembered a hot
living-room in a Paris apartment, her mother in the man's arms,
unmistakable, although the light given off by the city beneath them was
dim, then the chimes of Notre-Dame tolling three o'clock, and that scene
slowly left her mind.

The school bell outside the door of the girls' living-room clanged
loudly, and the black-haired girl standing beside her, looking at her
with those queer, incurious grey eyes, said quietly, 'It's no use your
waiting any longer for her. Come and have tea, there's fresh bread
to-day...'

Vicky's face vanished. She raised herself on her pillow still farther,
trying to bring it back so that the figure of the nun would not grow
larger and larger, but Vicky had gone. The nun moved back and forth,
outlined against the illuminated night sky of the city, and other
pictures of her appeared in the background. Soeur Catherine was standing
beside her low bed; she seemed immensely tall with her thin, passionate
face very far above little Rosalie Garcenot. She reached over and put
one hand on the child's chest, holding her down as she said, 'It's wrong
to give way like that! It's wrong! Control yourself, Rosalie, control
yourself!' What had it all been about? She could not remember now.

'Soeur Catherine is a saint,' the girls said...

The nun still walked back and forth, back and forth... Hail, Mary,
full of grace, gratia plena, gratia plena... then before Rosalie's
terrified eyes she stopped, holding the railing with both hands, looking
downward. She stood there a very long time, then, so quickly that
Rosalie could hardly see her, she put one foot over and was gone, her
skirts flying out as she fell.

'Vicky!' she screamed. '_Vicky!_'

Rosalie threw back the covers and half fell to the floor where she lay
for a moment trying to get her breath, then struggled up and over to the
door. It wouldn't open... please, Holy Mother, open this door...
yes, she remembered, that you had to lift it, for the lock was wrong.
She made a tremendous effort, and wrenched it open. The hall reached out
and away before her eyes; if she could get to the stair-well and call
down, Vicky, who was in Mlle Tourain's study three floors below, would
hear her.

'Vicky!' she called from the top of the stairs. 'Vicky, where are
you?... Oh, please come...' She began to sob, and started down the
stairs, but something caught her and she fell, straight down to the
landing, and lay there.




PART THREE
SATURDAY




CHAPTER IX


1

At ten the next morning the detective arrived. He was seen waddling up
the long drive from the gates to the corner of the house by a dozen or
more girls who were standing at their windows, aimlessly seeking
something to occupy their minds. Rosalie had been taken to the hospital
at four-thirty on Friday afternoon, and died a few hours later. The news
of her death was whispered from girl to girl at breakfast; when Natalia
told her, Vicky got up and left the dining-room, while Mlle Dupraix and
Mlle Devaux, on the point of protesting against such unconventional
behaviour, checked themselves and remained silent as they caught a
glimpse of her face. After that the girls finished their breakfast in
complete silence, the first time that such a thing had ever occurred in
the school. No one spoke, not even to whisper, as they rose and left the
dining-room to climb the stairs to their rooms half an hour later.

Mlle Tourain, crossing the hall from her study to the kitchens, stopped
by the door of the dining-room puzzled by the silence, opened it a
little, then closed it again, saying nothing. She forgot her errand to
the kitchens and returned to her study where she remained for more than
an hour lost in thought, and making no effort to restore a more normal
atmosphere. When the detective was shown in she was very distrait; it
was three-quarters of an hour before she had answered all his questions
and the bell rang to summon the girls to her study. She forgot the
beginning of his sentences before he had reached the end; her 'Pardon,
Monsieur?' interrupted him repeatedly, and several times he looked
across at the middle-aged woman sitting behind her desk, puzzled by her
behaviour. At last she noticed his expression and said quietly, 'You
will excuse my being somewhat upset; one of my girls died in hospital
here last night.' She paused a moment, looking upwards, then went on
incomprehensibly, 'You must understand that I blame myself because I
knew nothing about her. I hold myself responsible for her death through
my ignorance.'

He coughed awkwardly and continued his questions, appalled by the
silence all about him. No sound reached the study; the girls were all in
their rooms, too bewildered and too sad for talking. The mail, arriving
at ten o'clock, was distributed by Rose, tip-toeing from room to room;
no one went near the front hall where it was usually sorted and left on
the table for the girls themselves to collect.

2

Ilse sat at her desk once more, her feet twined around the legs of her
chair as she read Paul's letter. He told her that her father's health
had improved a little but that he had been ordered to the South of
France. By the time she received the letter they would be on their way
to Uncle Isaac Lehmann's little villa in St. Raphael. Uncle Isaac had
arrived at Saarbrcken on Wednesday morning and had spent the whole day
arguing with Herr Brning about the house. If someone did not go and
occupy it immediately it would fall to pieces; he, Isaac Lehmann, had no
wish to go near the place again, for now that his wife, Sarah, was dead,
the house held nothing but unhappiness for him.

'So your father agreed. We are leaving on Saturday morning... a few
hours before you get this even. I should like to have stayed and seen
the elections through, but the doctor is afraid that the strain of the
next few days might undo all the good of the past year, and prove a
serious setback for your father, so that's that. I expect you're
terribly glad, liebchen. Uncle Isaac has it all settled that your mother
and father should remain at St. Raphael for ever; at any rate, I've
offered this house for sale and I hope we shall be able to get rid of
it.

'Now for two bits of marvellous news. The first, I shall be seeing you
in Lausanne on Thursday or Friday of next week, on my way back to Paris
from St. Raphael. Won't it be heaven to be together again, darling? Your
father says it's only two weeks since you were home for Christmas, but
he's a silly ass and I told him so. It's months... years... in
fact, centuries. And Ilse, they're going to let you leave Pensionnat Les
Ormes and all its works, at Easter. I shall come for you and we'll go to
Paris to buy your trousseau... we'll stay with Uncle Isaac and Aunt
Naomi for two weeks, then go to St. Raphael and be married, then to
Italy for a month before we go back to Paris and my father's law
business again.'

She had begun to cry, pierced by this undreamed-of happiness, and had to
blink several times in order to finish the letter. She had not told him
how miserable she had been, but some of her anxiety and fear must have
seeped through her actual words, for the last paragraph expressed his
love and understanding in a way which made her think that he had guessed
more than he said:

'I have never a moment's doubt that we shall be happy together as long
as we live. I think it's because I believe in you, and know just what it
is that I must give you. You need to be believed in; lots of people do,
men as well as women, and often they can do great things in the end,
because of that conviction on the part of someone they love who loves
them, that they can and will accomplish the impossible. Without that
love they might equally well be nothing. I have the whole world when I
have you; without you I should be unreal, and only half alive. Till next
week, my darling Ilse,--Paul.'

3

'Marian, listen to me...' said Consuelo, sitting down beside her on
the bed. 'I've had a letter from Juan. It was mailed from Paris on
Thursday and says that he's leaving Friday night for Lausanne...
that's last night, so he must be here now. If you'll only get up right
away... this very minute... we can go out for the week-end and not
come back until Monday morning. We can dance, and drive, and play
ping-pong, and enjoy ourselves.'

Marian said nothing, but she looked at her friend intently as though,
for the first time, she were really taking her seriously, thought
Consuelo. That was something. 'I've never in all our time together asked
you to do anything for me, but I'm asking you now, because I think
you're mad to go on this way. If you don't try to get back to normal,
you'll ruin your health. In another month, you'll be really ill, and no
good to anyone. This would be all very well if you were alone on a
desert island but you're not; you're living in the world; you have
duties and obligations to other people... to your mother and father,
to Mlle Tourain, to the other girls here... and to me. You're lying
down on the job. If you don't snap out of this, I... well, I won't
think much of you, that's all.'

She had never heard Consuelo say such a thing before, and looked rather
hurt for a moment. Then she said with difficulty, 'I haven't thought of
it from that point of view. What difference do I make, Con? What does it
matter to anyone if I do this, or that, or the other thing? None that I
can see. To you, perhaps...'

'Yes,' she said. 'To me, as well as a good many other people. One would
think you were living in a sort of vacuum, but you're not. You know, it
really is true that you get out of things more or less what you put into
them. So long as you spend your life thinking about Marian Comstock,
your life won't be worth living. I grant you that it isn't now.'

'Don't talk to me like that,' she said, her mouth trembling.

'I _will_ talk to you like that! Heaven knows, I'm no fool, I'm
perfectly aware of what you're up against, but I refuse to sit and
sympathize with you any longer. I'll _do_ what I can... I mean I
wrote my Mother a couple of days ago and asked her if she'd invite you
to come and spend the summer with us on Lake Como... she's renting a
villa near Bellagio, and lots of Juan's friends will be there, so it
will be fun. Next year Juan and I are going to have an apartment in
Paris with one of our aunts from London to chaperon us, and you might
come along too. I wrote Mother about that as well, and she'll see if she
can arrange it with your parents.' She hesitated a moment, then went on,
'I didn't tell you that because I wanted to see you have the guts to get
up and face things without putting a lot of jam on the bread to make it
easier to swallow. And if I thought that you'd just prefer to lie here
for the rest of your two years, moping, I'd move out to-morrow and room
with Teddy. I haven't the right temperament for nurse to a...
neurotic.'

They stared at each other in silence for a moment, Consuelo's face
rigidly uncompromising, Marian half tearful, half angry. Her expression
changed a moment later; before Consuelo's astonished eyes, she began to
look amused. The amusement spread from her eyes to her mouth, until at
last she threw back her head on the pillow and began to laugh. She
laughed helplessly for a moment, then said, 'Excuse me, I think perhaps
I'm adding hysteria to all my other ailments. But it struck me suddenly
what an ass I am, and the contrast to what I've imagined I was all these
weeks is so... so... overpowering, that I have to laugh or cry.
I'd rather laugh. Well, get up, Miss Nightingale; I can't move while
you're practically sitting on top of me.' And a moment later, rather
thoughtfully, 'By the way, is there any chance of Peter Vinen being at
the Palace this afternoon?'

'Perhaps,' said Consuelo.

'And I haven't got anything to wear!'

'You can wear my new blue dress,' said Consuelo unselfishly, and then
sighed. 'Though someone told me I was simply devastating in it. Still,
thy need is greater than mine. But I'm going to take you shopping next
week. I'm fed up with being the mainstay of your existence, sartorially
as well as emotionally.' But she smiled, and for the first time in many
days her face had its old serene, untroubled look.

Marian said suddenly, 'Thanks, Con. Thanks... for everything.

'You're welcome, my dear... as we say in So Paulo, Brazil.'

4

Catherine Shaunessy had a letter from her mother. She was lying face
down on her bed, with her chin on her hands, reading it for a second
time when Mary came in the door and silently sat down beside her. She
saw that Cay's face was streaked with tears but she said nothing for a
while, not wishing to interrupt her. The little American rolled over on
her back at last and sat up, with her feet straight out in front of her.
'Well,' she said, as unemotionally as she could, 'Mother says that if I
don't stop kicking about this place, she won't write me at all. This is
the first she's written in six weeks, so I wouldn't be missing much.'

'Do you... kick... much?'

She shook her head and said, with that air of bravado and challenge
which had become habitual with her, 'No. Why should I? This is my idea
of a perfect way of putting in three years, without causing anyone any
trouble. I may have remarked once or twice to her that it would be nice
if I could look forward to seeing her and Dad in the summer, instead of
two and a half years from now, but that's as far as I went.'

'Cay, perhaps if you did well here, they'd let you leave as soon as you
were ready for college...'

'Oh, yeah? I've been in boarding-school ever since I was eight! Besides,
I don't want to go to college if I have to board there. I'm sick of
being cooped up! I wish to goodness my dear parents had known a little
more about birth control...'

'Cay!'

'Well, what do you think?' she demanded. 'Do you send your kids to
boarding-school for nine months of the year and to camp for the other
three if you want to have them around? No, you don't.' She was silent a
moment, drawing her knees up and resting her chin on them. She was
trying to make up her mind whether or not she should tell Miss Ellerton
of her recent inspiration. At last she decided in the affirmative.
'Well, it doesn't matter. I've hit on a sure way of getting out of here,
anyway.'

Mary got up and walked over to the window. Looking out over the lake
towards the mountains of France she said casually, 'I've wondered how
long it would be before that occurred to you.'

'Before what occurred to me?' she asked, eyeing Miss Ellerton narrowly.
'You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?'

'Yes, Cay, I do. But I'm afraid it wouldn't work.'

'Why wouldn't it?'

'No one would believe that you had sneaked in and out of the girls'
rooms, ransacked their bureau drawers, turned out their pockets, sat
silent and watched Ilse taking the brunt of it... No, Cay, not you. I
know you too well, and so do a great many others. You'd just be laughed
at.' She saw Cay begin to cry again, but continued in the same casual
tone, 'I wonder if you could be any good at sports, if you worked hard
at them... ski-ing and skating, for example. Basketball too.'

'Why?' she asked, looking up.

Mary sat down on the windowsill with a sigh, and said wearily, 'Heavens,
what a week this has been!' And a moment later, 'I'm going to have to
ask Mlle Tourain to let me have an assistant... someone to coach the
beginners.'

Cay suddenly sat up. She stared at Miss Ellerton. She took her
handkerchief from her pocket and dried her eyes, started to say
something, then checked herself. She waited, for what seemed to her at
least an hour, but Miss Ellerton was apparently engrossed in counting
the flowers on the strip of wall-paper above the door, and said nothing.
At last Cay's self-control gave way. She burst out, 'Let me do it! Oh,
_please_ let me do it! I could. Really, I could... I... well, when
I was in school in Portland I was the junior... I got the cup for the
greatest number of points among the younger girls. Honestly I did, Miss
Ellerton!'

'I don't doubt it,' said Mary rather drily, 'but I'd like to see you
with my own eyes. Ever since I've been here the only thing you've done
with any success is breaking bounds and smoking after lights out. It's
the only thing you've really put your mind on.' Her eyes suddenly
contracted: she thought with a sudden wry smile which had vanished
before Cay noticed it: You see, Vicky, I may turn out to be some good at
it after all, then brought her mind back to Cay, who had jumped down
from the bed and was looking at her entreatingly, her short, red hair
almost standing on end from its recent battle with her pillow.

'If I...' she said, and swallowing, made a fresh start. 'If I don't
break a single rule... if I'm as good as gold for the next month,
would you...?'

'I'll think it over. But you've got to promise to stop making such an
ass of yourself.'

'I promise,' she said, blowing her nose energetically. She had now
committed herself, and her feelings were somewhat mixed, as she thought
of what she had let herself in for. Anyway, if she _had_ succeeded in
getting herself expelled, her parents would only have put her in
another, stricter school, so this was certainly the best solution. On
the whole, things looked a good deal brighter than they had an hour ago.

Mary paused with her hand on the door-knob. 'You don't know where Vicky
is, do you? No one's seen her since she walked out... since
breakfast.'

'She might be in Ted's room,' Cay suggested.

5

Theodora was speechless with rage when Mary walked in. She waved the
telegram which she had just received by way of explanation, unable to
articulate. At last she said, collapsing into a chair, 'It's my
brother.'

'Your brother?' repeated Mary. 'I didn't know you had a brother. I
thought you just had a moth...'

'I've got a brother all right! The long-legged, feeble-minded,
son of a...'

'Leave it to my imagination,' she said hastily.

'All right. Let's see what your imagination can produce in the
way of... of...' She ran one hand through her hair and gestured
hopelessly. 'Well, what do you think he's done? I give you...
I give you... Oh, millions of guesses. You'll never hit on it.'

'Motor-accident?'

'No.'

'Assault and battery?'

'No.'

'Arson?'

'No... No! You're way off the track,' said Theodora.

'Gambling?'

'No.'

'... er...?'

'Certainly not,' said Theodora. 'Don't forget he's an American, and
therefore a sentimentalist.'

'I give up.'

'He's married a girl named Angela.' She paused for breath, looked up at
the ceiling for a moment, then said with a sweet smile, 'My brother is
just twenty. Angela says she's twenty-two. My brother believes her. He
sent me a photograph. I looked at it. She seems to me to be a ripe
thirty-five, but perhaps she was tired when it was taken, so we'll give
her the benefit of the doubt and say she's thirty-four. My brother comes
in for half a million dollars in six months... _Oh!!_' she said,
gritting her teeth, and hurled her hair brush at the photograph of
Lewis. The glass fell to the floor in pieces.

'Feel better?' asked Mary, then continued conversationally, 'I knew a
man once who always threw gramophone records at the fire-place when he
was annoyed. Then there was another... a second cousin of my
mother-in-law by marriage... who always broke china.' She saw that
Theodora was really unhappy and sought about in her mind for something
to say, but failed to find anything. The girl looked rather bewildered,
and was tying and untying a series of knots in one of her beautiful
chiffon handkerchiefs. 'Never mind, Teddy,' she said at last.
'Perhaps...'

'It's not my idea of a marriage,' she said in a low voice. 'You don't
know Lewis. He's... nice, for all he's so scatter-brained... an
idealist if there ever was one. He's always thought I was absurd to be
so cynical; I'll bet that poor baby thinks little Angela's like Diane in
"Seventh Heaven". He's probably even now establishing her in a Paris
attic and looking for a job as a waiter or a ditch-digger.'

'What will your mother say?' asked Mary.

Theodora shrugged. 'She'll probably be furious, and then helpless, and
then forget all about it.' Her hands dropped to her sides; she looked
about the room aimlessly and remarked, 'It all makes me feel more like
an orphan than ever. It's funny how many of us there are who really
haven't anyone at all, isn't it? I mean we're alone, with no one to
stand between us and our sense of... the strangeness of living. Vick,
Cay, Yasha, Stephania, Rosalie... Rosalie,' she repeated unsteadily.
'She was... a sadder... spectacle than any of us.' She stopped,
trying to blink away her tears, and stared out the window for a moment.
'None of us really tried to help her... no one but Vick. Now I know I
won't ever forgive myself for not having made more effort to... to...
help. I suppose that's the way with everything as long as we live...
so many regrets, so many things left undone, so much falling down
on the job. Sometimes I think I'm so inadequate, such a mess, and wonder
if I'll ever be anything else.' Her tears got the better of her, and she
buried her head in her arms. Mary watched her for a few seconds, then
got up and went out, closing the door quietly behind her.

6

Anna von Landenburg was reading a special delivery letter from
Nrdlingen.

'My daughter, I can think of no way to make what I have to tell you less
hard to bear. Your father was arrested this morning just before sunrise
and taken to the prison in Munich. He is to go before the military
tribunal on Monday. I think you had better come to Munich at once, for I
know that you could not remain inactive in your school without news, and
it takes too long this way. I do not wish to intrude upon you at this
terrible time, but I am taking the liberty of asking Sister Constance to
leave for Lausanne to-morrow morning on the early train so that she
should arrive almost as soon as this letter. I hope to see you both on
Sunday.

'Remember that you need never feel lonely and uncared for, since there
are many of us here in the monastery and in your convent, who pray for
your happiness and welfare and who love you as a daughter. Your father
suggested to me that you might like to train as a nurse or a doctor;
whatever you decide to do, let it be started as soon as possible for
your own sake, and also because I think it would make him happy to know
that his work would be carried on, though in a different way of course.
He said to me yesterday, before this blow fell, that he had only one
stipulation to make... you must not concern yourself with politics.
Perhaps it is a weakness in him and in me, but neither of us could bear
to see you endanger yourself in any way...'

She raised her eyes to the icon above her head, the remaining sentences
lying unread before her on the desk. Now that the worst had happened she
was calm; she neither wept not gave any outward sign of her despair as
she sat, looking up at her Virgin.

'Holy Mother,' she prayed, as the brothers at Nrdlingen were praying,
'Intercede for my Father...' and a little later when she could no
longer control her tears, 'Give me courage, Holy Mother, give me
courage; I have so much to do.'

7

Natalia said, rather perplexed, 'Do you suppose the room would look
better if we put the bureau over there?'

'I do not,' said Yasha, for once moved to protest. 'I've let you put the
desk in the alcove where there isn't any light; I've let you put the
dressing-table so close to the door that you can hardly squeeze past it
getting in and out, but I draw the line at putting the bureau where we
can't open the windows. There are limits, Natalia, and this time you've
overstepped them.' She was sitting on her bed cross-legged, eating an
apple. 'I wish you would make up your mind on the subject of career _v._
marriage once and for all, and leave the furniture alone.'

'The furniture hasn't anything to do with it,' said Natalia.

'Of course it has. Why did you let yourself get involved in this
engagement, anyhow?'

'It just... well, it just happened,' she said, her heavy dark face
very unhappy.

'Is he nice?'

'I expect he's all right,' she said indifferently.

'You expect he's all right!' she said incredulously. 'What a perfectly
splendid reason for marrying a man. The poor soul,' she went on
reflectively. 'I feel rather sorry for him. He'll probably never know
from one day to the next whether the marital bed is in the greenhouse or
the vestibule. How did it happen?'

'Our families just... well, they arranged it.'

'Don't you Armenians ever realize that this is the twentieth century? I
didn't think they did that sort of thing any more, except with royalty.'

'We still do it,' she said, sitting down on her bed which was at this
moment occupying the centre of the room. 'You see, I'm almost
twenty-one. As a matter of fact, that's rather late for an engagement.'

'When do they expect you to get married?'

'In the summer,' she said hopelessly.

Yasha sat up and stared. For once her face had lost its impassivity; her
brown eyes were wide open as she said forcefully, 'Natalia, stop being
such a jelly-fish!'

'How can I? Everyone I know gets married... One just _does_, that's
all...'

'And what happens? After six months your husband takes a mistress. You
either take a lover, or you spend your time producing children.
Marriage!' said Yasha contemptuously. 'Pouf!'

'Is that what happens?' she asked, her black eyes narrowing.

'If it's a _mariage de convenance_. What do you expect? Why should Akim
be faithful to you? He probably says, "I expect she's all right", in
exactly the same enthusiastic, love-sick way that you just said it.'

'Do you mean to tell me that I... that I'm going to spend the rest of
my life being... well, being... deceived?'

'Undoubtedly,' said Yasha.

'Then what's the point of it?' she asked.

'What, indeed,' replied Yasha, shrugging. 'That's what I've been trying
to find out ever since I've known you.'

'But... but...' she stammered in complete bewilderment, 'I don't
understand!'

'You don't have to. You just be a good girl and do what you're told, and
then, forty or fifty years from now, a few helpless young women will
have to do what _you_ say. That's your reward.' And a moment later, in a
tone of mild exasperation, 'What on earth did you expect?'

'I thought it would work out. I mean I thought being married changed
everything... that afterwards one grew to love the other and...'

'Parbleu, but you're an ass! Something like the movies, hein? Moonlight,
and roses, and romance, and the magic spell of marriage. My God,' said
Yasha, with feeling. 'Look at him!' They both considered the photograph
of Akim, very seriously. 'You expect _that_ to turn into Valentino after
a week of your society. Well, he won't. He'll still have that funny mole
on the end of his nose, and that smug look. In fact he'll look even
smugger by the end of ten years, having put it over on you in a way
he'll think quite clever, telling you that he's going to such and such a
place when he's really going to see his little cabbage, and then after a
while not bothering to tell you anything.'

'Well, what would you do?' she asked.

'I'd write a polite letter home saying that you won't marry him, and
that you want to go to a university. You do, don't you?'

'Yes,' she said with an intensity which would have astonished anyone but
Yasha, who knew her very well. 'Oh, _yes_, I do!'

'Well, then I'd get Mlle Tourain to write to your family and point out
to them that you've had excellent grades ever since you've been here,
and that she thinks you should go. That would be a help. If you went to
the Sorbonne, you could live with Aime's family, couldn't you?'

'Yes, and they'd help too, if there was a quarrel... and there would
be one,' she added ruefully. 'Aime's going next year,' she remarked a
moment later. She continued to sit motionless for a minute, looking
thoughtfully at the photograph of Akim, then she said decisively, 'I'll
do it. I'll do it now!' She got up, went over to the desk, and seizing
her pen began to write. The letter took her about twenty minutes, during
which Yasha ate a second apple, watching her out of the corner of her
eye. At last Natalia sat back, sighed, and picking up an envelope, put
the letter in it and sealed it up.

'Have you got a stamp, Yasha?' she asked.

'In my writing-case.'

'Thanks. Well, that's that.'

'Give it to me,' said Yasha. 'I'm not going to take any chances. If you
want to get this thing back, you'll have to murder me.' She stuffed the
letter inside her blouse, then observed, with a return to her old,
indifferent manner, 'I suppose there's no use asking you to move the
furniture back where it was before?'

'All right,' said Natalia. Together they shoved the bed back to its
former place along the wall, and the bureau into its original position
between the door and the alcove, Natalia remarking vaguely, 'I've often
wondered what you'd do when you got out of here.'

'I,' said Yasha shamelessly, 'am thinking of getting married.'

8

Ruth Anderson was sitting in front of the dressing-table, in the room
which she shared with her sister... the room which Vicky had
ransacked the day before in her unsuccessful search for the package of
cigarettes... plucking her eyebrows, with now and again a quick
glance at Cissie's reflection in the mirror before her. Picking a fine
hair from her tweezers, Ruth remarked rather impatiently, 'Mlle Dupraix
must have a pretty good idea that there was something queer about that
business yesterday. She came in here right after lunch... before I'd
had a chance to straighten up the room. Vicky left it in an awful mess.
I must say I don't see why she had to turn the bureau drawers upside
down and...'

'What did Mlle Dupraix say?' asked Cissie rather anxiously.

'Nothing. She just looked wise. It's a good thing for us it was her and
not anyone else, or we might have got into trouble. But she loathes
Vicky, so that I suppose...'

'Yes,' said Cissie shortly. And a moment later, 'God, I hate this
place!'

Ruth glanced swiftly at the reflection in the mirror, and sighing, set
down her tweezers exactly parallel to the pink-backed brush, comb,
mirror, nail-file, nail-scissors, buffer and shoehorn which were all
arranged in a neat row at an angle of sixty-five degrees to the edge of
the dressing-table. She scanned her face in the mirror for a moment and
said, 'I wish to goodness I could get a few facials...' Her skin was
pink, too pink, from the point of her chin to the arch of her tortured
eyebrows which now looked more raw than ever from too-frequent plucking.
She had been endowed with that cast of middle-class English face which
never permits its owner to look like a member of the upper classes. She
saw Cissie's almost perfect profile, softened by a certain innate
sweetness, outlined against the brilliant outer world as she stood by
the window, and fell to brushing her hair with renewed energy. Cissie
might be better looking, but she wasn't half so popular with men.

'Have I got time to give myself a manicure before that police
examination?' asked Ruth, putting down her brush... exactly parallel
to the other toilet articles.

'I don't know. Do as you like,' she answered indifferently.

Ruth settled herself on the bed with a towel, polish-remover,
orange-stick, nail-file and the rest of her expensive paraphernalia, and
began to file her nails. She glanced once more at Cissie; really,
thought Ruth, her sister was so silent and morose these days that she
was almost unfit for human consumption, and for the past twenty-four
hours she had only uttered a few, ill-humoured words when someone spoke
to her. The remainder of the time she had said nothing, but had wandered
restlessly about, paid no attention in class, and was so nervous and
irritable that one didn't dare to ask what was bothering her.

The two sisters were inseparable, but it was an association which was
the result of habit, and of the same interests in life... or the same
lack of them... rather than of any deep-seated emotion. Cissie was
engaged; it was immediately after their father's first meeting with her
fianc that Mr. Anderson had disinterred himself from his factory and
ordered them abroad for another year. He had met his wife's objections
by stating that he had not the time to argue about it; he was due in
Munich for a business conference in forty-eight hours, and would leave
the two girls at Pensionnat les Ormes on the way. He did not even allow
them any time to shop. They disliked their father. He, in his turn,
disliked them. He asked little of anyone, even of his daughters, but
sincerity, humour and generosity; qualities in which Ruth and Cissie
were conspicuously lacking. He was not a domestic man; he had never in
his life believed that he should love his daughters because he happened
to be their father, and was totally lacking in conventional, paternal
feeling.

'Well,' said Cissie suddenly, whirling about and facing her younger
sister, 'Why don't you say something, for heaven's sake?'

Ruth's mouth dropped open in astonishment. She ceased filing her nails
in order to stare at her sister. 'What's the matter with you?' she
demanded.

'You know perfectly well what's the matter with me! It's Vicky... and
if she isn't on your mind, she ought to be.'

'Oh, rot. She brought them in.'

'Bringing them in isn't against the rules. She was gated for smoking
them... and it was you and I who smoked them, not Vicky.'

'Now see here, Cissie, it's not going to do any good to rake that up all
over again!' Ruth said, becoming impatient. 'It's bad enough being here
at all without having everyone treat us as though we were... well,
just children, like everyone else. I _won't_ have the staff start
looking down their noses at us, and the younger girls think we're the
same age as them. I won't have it! You couldn't stand that either,' she
added a little more calmly, and began to file her nails again.

Cissie looked at her almost contemptuously, then turned her back, her
eyes once more fixed on the mountains across the lake. Something had
happened to her during the past two hours... perhaps it was Rosalie's
death. No young person whom she knew had ever died before. It had not
occurred to her that such a thing could happen. She thought, Rosalie has
gone, and nothing will bring her back, nothing at all. I might travel
everywhere, I might look in every corner of the world, and I should
never find her.

She said suddenly, hesitatingly, as though she only half-perceived the
truth in her own words, 'How unimportant we are. How tired God must be
of the silly, rattling noises we make...'

The nail-file fell to the floor with a soft click. Ruth said, her face
aghast, 'Are you going mad?'

'No.'

'Well, you're talking sheer drivel, if you want my opinion.'

'I don't want your opinion. For the first time in my life I don't care
about your opinion, or anyone else's either. And I'm going to try not to
care, ever again.'

'Cissie! For heaven's sake pull yourself together!'

'That's what I'm doing. Hasn't it occurred to you that... that...
Rosalie's dead... and yet you and I... are worrying about being
found out...' She suddenly started toward the door, paused, then
resolutely went on, and opened it.

'Where do you think you're going?' asked Ruth.

'I'm going to find Vicky.'

'What are you going to say to her?'

'I'm going to say that I... that I'm so... so utterly futile...
that I've got to do something about it. I've suddenly realized that I'm
going to live with myself for the rest of my life; I'm twenty-two, and
if I don't try now, it may be too late. I've just got to straighten this
out... it isn't much, but it's a beginning.'

'Do you know what you sound like? The last chapter of a penny dreadful!'

'I don't care what I sound like!' she said impatiently, and then
increased her sister's pained astonishment by smiling suddenly. 'I
don't, Ruth,' she said almost joyfully. 'I _don't_! For the very first
time in my life... ever since I can remember, I've worried about what
I looked like, and what I sounded like... if I ever thought or felt
anything really deeply, I didn't say anything about it because...
because of being laughed at, for fear of having people think I was
different, or ridiculous, or some kind of... of... female poet...
but now I don't care, and it's nice. It's frightfully nice. Do you
know something? I'm free... I'm free of a whole lot of things...
I'm just beginning to know that not many things are really worth
bothering about... but that there are a few things that are worth...
a lot of bother... Oh, _oceans_ of bother!' she added, throwing
out her hands in a wide gesture.

'So you start to reform yourself by getting us both into a mess...'
began Ruth, but her voice trailed away before she got really started.
Cissie had gone.

9

Vicky was in Rosalie's room, huddled in a chair which she had drawn
close to the window on coming up from breakfast, and where she had been
sitting ever since, motionless, without tears. The room had been
stripped of all Rosalie's belongings except the black cross which was
still nailed to the wall above her bed; soon someone would come to take
it down, someone would wonder what to do with it. Perhaps it would be
sent back to Canada with the rest of Rosalie's things. In a little while
another girl would move into this room, next term probably. After her
would come still others, each a little different from the one who
preceded her, and the one who followed her, each lending to the room a
little of her own personality for a few fleeting months. Already the
atmosphere which had disturbed so many girls was gone; there was now
nothing left of Rosalie, who had suffered, and prayed, and repeated so
carefully the day before, 'I'll keep a little tavern, below the high
hill's crest', nothing but Vicky, of whom she had become a part.

She did not hear Cissie open the door and only looked up as she spoke
her name. She wondered why the English girl's eyes filled with tears as
she saw her face. I suppose I must look queer, she thought, and stood
up. 'You wanted to see me?'

'Yes.' She came forward a little and stood by the other side of the
window, so that there was a shaft of light between them. She had never
seen such grief in another face, and had to bite her lip in an effort to
steady it. She could not bear to look at those grey eyes, and said, 'You
shouldn't be alone here like this...' watching the smoke rising from
a distant chimney. She did not know why she said it; Vicky was really
almost a stranger to her. In all their four months together they had
only spoken very casually to one another, a fact which Cissie now
bitterly regretted.

'I'm all right,' said Vicky mechanically.

'Vicky, I...'

'Yes?'

'I want to say something to you. It's about those cigarettes. I don't
know now how I could ever have done such a thing...'

She raised one hand to her eyes, and stared at Cissie uncomprehendingly.
It seemed impossible to drag her mind away from Rosalie; impossible to
make herself think. She had heard the words spoken to her across the
window, but she had to repeat them to herself before she grasped their
meaning. She said at last, 'Don't think about it. It's over and done
with', wondering why Cissie had come to her about such a trivial and
silly thing at a time like this.

Cissie said almost passionately, 'No, it's not over and done with! Don't
you see? I've got to do something about this...' She shook her head,
then began to talk in a confused rush of words; she told Vicky why she
had said nothing in the dining-room, why, all her life, she had been
afraid to say and do what she felt and what she knew she ought to do, in
a series of words, phrases and sentences of which Vicky understood
nothing.

She interrupted Cissie half-way through her recital with an apologetic,
'I'm so sorry, I can't... make myself... think properly. I don't
understand you...'

'But you must!' She knew now why it was that she must make her peace
with Vicky, and why it was that all her life she would bitterly regret
not having known her better. 'How I could do such a thing to you,' she
said, her voice shaken with sobs, 'and how any of us could fail to...
to... realize what you are, I don't know. To think that I should drag
you through such a miserable, petty business, and force you into a
position where someone could... humiliate you... like that...'

Vicky watched her unseeingly. Her mind was gradually clearing. She had
no idea of what Cissie was talking about, it sounded like nonsense, but
she kept repeating to herself, 'It must matter very much to her or she
wouldn't be doing it', over and over again until at last she had brought
herself into the present. Her voice, low and clear, suddenly reached the
English girl's ears saying 'It's all right, Cissie. I understood why you
did it, so it wasn't important. Things like that only matter if you
don't understand them. That applies to both of us, to you as well, so
don't think about it any more.'

'What can I do now?'

'Do?' What did the girl mean? 'You can't do anything now, why should
you? It's all finished and forgotten.'

'I'll go to Mlle Tourain,' she said.

'No, please don't do that.'

'But I can't go on letting everyone think that you...' Cissie began.

She had a mental picture of Cissie further troubling the headmistress
who already had quite enough on her mind, and leaning back against the
window-frame, every line of her body betraying her exhaustion, she tried
to explain. 'Don't you see, you'll just cause more confusion, more
worry. It really means so little to me... don't you understand that?'

'Yes,' she said, staring at Vicky. 'Yes... yes, I do.' She began to
say something else, but checked herself as the school bell clanged three
floors below. 'That's for the cross-examination,' she said. 'Are you
coming, Vicky? Or would you rather I... I asked Mlle Tourain to...
to let you... skip it?'

'No, no. I'm... I'm all right. I think I'll get a glass of water
before I go down, though,' she added, as she walked toward the door. She
had a feeling, as the door closed, that behind her, in that room,
somewhere in the past, Rosalie's voice could still be heard saying, 'I
wish they wouldn't take me away from you, and send me to a strange
place, with strange people...'




CHAPTER X


1

Vicky stopped in her room to brush her hair slowly and carefully,
indifferent to the headmistress's specific order to line up outside the
study door as soon as the bell rang. Her immediate surroundings had
become hazy, and she was unable to infuse any sense of reality into her
movements. She was standing by the dressing-table, looking blankly at
her reflection in the mirror and trying to remember why it was that the
bell had rung, when her small room-mate, Ina Barren, came slowly into
the room and sat down on the edge of her bed. She had evidently run
upstairs, for her breathing was loud and rasping; she was not crying,
but she was obviously very frightened, for her mouth was working and she
was slowly tearing one of Vicky's handkerchiefs into small pieces.

'What's the matter, Ina?' she asked.

She moistened her lips and said, 'I... I couldn't bear it, down
there. I had to run away. You... you tell Mlle Tourain. I just
couldn't stand it...'

'Stand what?'

'Waiting outside there with all the others for the... the policeman
to...'

'Oh. Yes, I remember now. But it's no worse for you than anyone
else...' She stopped, her alarmed eyes searching the child's face. She
seemed to be almost stunned with fear. Vicky remembered the nights in
September and October when Ina had dreamed that she was being taken to a
reformatory and wakened Vicky by her sobbing; she supposed that this was
a return of that apprehension which had been instilled in the girl by
her aunt, as a means of discipline, apparently, and said as reasonably
as she could, 'Mlle Tourain got the man up here, hoping that the girl
who actually did it would react exactly as you're reacting, but there's
no need for _you_...' She stopped again. 'Ina!'

The peremptory note in her voice forced Ina to meet her eyes. For a few
seconds she held on, then flung her head down on the pillow and began to
sob, while Vicky watched her in dismay. 'You did it,' she said. 'Why?'

She was crying uncontrollably now, her feet beating a tattoo on the
mattress, and could not answer for a moment. Vicky waited, so appalled
that she could think of nothing to say. She could not think, and yet she
_must_ straighten the thing out in her mind before she began to consider
the consequences or tried to decide on a course of action. Ina's voice,
muffled by the pillow, reached her at last, saying incoherently, 'It was
for you... a watch. I just _had_ to give you something, but I never
have any money. Ted gives you things... and Consuelo, even
Maria-Teresa, and I hadn't... anything. You haven't got a watch and
I've often heard you say that you need one. You're always being late for
things.' She spoke so simply that there was no doubt she was telling the
truth.

I might have guessed it anyhow, thought Vicky, reaching out with a vague
gesture for something to lean against. She was almost too tired to
stand. She half sat on the dressing-table, too discouraged to think at
all clearly, for a while, then she said dully, 'Where is the money?'

'In the pocket of my jersey.'

'All of it?'

'Yes.'

'How... much, altogether?'

'About six hundred francs.'

Vicky went slowly over to the cupboard, took the bundle of notes from
the pocket, and threw it down on the dressing-table. She said, looking
out the window, dragging out the words in a voice so unlike her own that
Ina raised her head to glance across at her in perplexity, 'I
couldn't... want... that kind of... present. You might have known that.
How could you dream that I would... like... anything which had
made other people unhappy? Have you such a low opinion of me that you
think I would be pleased with a present which had... hurt... Ilse,
and so many other people, so much? It wouldn't have been your gift
anyhow. Don't you see that?'

'I didn't think of that. I didn't think of anything except that they've
such a lot of money and I haven't any at all to buy you something with.
I couldn't even buy you an apple, and I wanted you to know how much I...
care... about you...'

'You don't care about me, Ina.'

'I do!' she said passionately. She scrambled to a sitting position on
the bed and went on, 'I'd do anything for you, anything in the world...'

'You don't care as much for me as you do for yourself. Don't you see,
this is all... vanity... You wanted me to be grateful to you...'
She shook her head, unable to maintain such a difficult attitude,
and said, 'I wish I could make you see it as it is, and not as you want
it to be. I'm no good at scolding; I don't want to abuse you or
anything, but surely you can understand that apart from taking what
isn't yours, you've done something wrong... something terribly wrong,
in hurting, and worrying other people so much, and making them so
unhappy...' She paused, having suddenly lost the thread of her
thought as it occurred to her that the end of this whole business was
not here, but downstairs in Mlle Tourain's study. The headmistress would
make a public example of Ina; possibly she would expel her. Her aunt
would come to hear of it, and the few chances there were now that Ina
would ever become a valuable human being... Vicky shook her head
hopelessly and began to walk up and down the room, twisting a
handkerchief through her fingers and paying no attention to the small
figure on the bed. She could think of no solution, and was on the point
of saying so when the door opened and Theodora came in.

She sat down on Vicky's bed and said cheerfully, 'I just thought I'd
come and remind you, darling, that the bell went fifteen minutes ago, in
case you've forgotten.'

'Is Ilse all right?' asked Vicky, and before Theodora had had time to
answer, she continued, with a long sigh, 'Oh, Teddy, Teddy, I'm so glad
you're here!'

'So am I,' said Theodora, looking rather bewildered. 'But why,
particularly?'

'Oh, just because,' she said, rather amused at her own outburst.
'Because you're so sunny, maybe. Because of your ridiculous red hair,
and your gorgeous sanity, and... oh, everything.'

'My hair isn't ridiculous,' she said, looking injured. 'Most people
think I'm nuts, and no one has ever thought I had a sunny disposition.
Love is certainly blind.' Her brown eyes contracted as she looked at
Vicky, and saw what the past few hours had done to her; like Cissie, she
wanted to cry, but unlike Cissie, she was almost grimly determined not
to. Instead she continued, 'Apropos of Ilse, it seems our Paul is even
now galloping in her direction, so all is rosy. Mlle Tourain told her
that she didn't have to descend for a scene with The Law, but she's so
ecstatic now that the entire police force of Lausanne wouldn't bother
her, so she came down. Love must be wonderful. I sometimes think...
but we'll go into that some other time. There are still about twenty
girls to go, so don't hurry yourselves... just come when it's
convenient,' she added politely. Her eyes fell on the money, and she
whistled. 'What's that?' she demanded.

'It's...'

'Well, what is it?' She stared at Vicky, then turned to Ina and began,
'You tell me, then, because Vick... and cut herself short. She looked
at Ina, first incredulous, then horrified. Her voice dropped, as it
always did when she was very angry. 'Oh. You don't need to tell me,' she
said coldly. 'So it was you, all the time. I might have guessed it. No
one else would be so wrapped up in themselves that they could stand
seeing Ilse and everyone else so miserable...'

'She did it for me,' said Vicky quietly.

'For you!'

'Yes. She... she wanted to... buy me something...'

'How nice of her,' said Theodora. 'In fact, how clever of her to live
with you all these months and imagine that that would please you. Oh,
stop bellowing, Ina!' she said with sudden fury. 'Instead of enjoying a
good cry you'd better think up some way of getting Vick out of this...'

'Getting Vick out of this?' repeated Ina, trying to dry her eyes with
the back of her hand. 'Why?'

'Why?' said Theodora. 'Don't you see why? You go and tell Mlle Tourain
that you did it for Vick, and in the first place she'll never believe
that Vicky didn't know about it all the time... the way she knew
about Ro... about everyone, and in the second place it will all...
this whole damned mess... will wind up at Vicky's feet as usual.
Short of planting the money on her and having it fall out of her pocket
at dinner, you couldn't have involved Vicky any more neatly in this if
you'd tried!'

'There's no use in going on like that, Ted,' said Vicky. 'It's done,
anyhow. What are we going to do? How can we ask Mlle Tourain to...
to... deal with it herself, so that... the aunt... well, you know
what I mean. I can't think of anything, I've run out of ideas.'

'Let her stew in her own juice,' said Theodora irritably. 'She can't be
babied all her life. She can take what's coming to her...'

'No, because if this is just settled in the ordinary, boarding-school
way, she'll learn nothing by it. She won't understand the... the
truth of what she's done, any more than she does now. Having everyone
know she's a... that she's...'

'A thief,' said Theodora coolly.

'Yes. Well, having everyone know that... will just emphasize the
money aspect. _It's_ not the important one. She's got to learn something
besides the sanctity of property... I mean the way she's hurt other
people. That's _got_ to be brought home to her some way.'

'God, don't you ever get tired of... Oh, well, let it go. Personally,
I don't give a damn what happens to her.'

'Teddy,' she said pleadingly, 'Forget that I'm involved in this for just
one minute... or even half a minute, will you _please_?'

'How can I forget it? The whole business will end up by doing only one
thing... convincing Amlia once and for all that no matter what
happens, no matter how trivial or how serious it is, if she looks long
enough and hard enough, she'll find you at the bottom of it. And I will
_not_ have you dragged through another grilling to-day. I simply won't
have it! I don't give two hoots for Ina, so far as I'm concerned she can
jump out of the window now or go and drown herself, for all I care, but
the idea of you going down there and being hauled over the coals for
this, after everything you've... you've been through during the past
three days... _No_, and that's final.'

'Then what are we going to do about it?'

Theodora pondered for a moment. 'I'll say I did it,' she suggested
brightly.

'Splendid. Then we can all gather round and have a good laugh.'

'What do you mean, a good laugh?'

'Don't be ridiculous, Teddy. Go and take a good look at yourself in the
mirror. That's about the wettest idea I've heard from you so far, and
most of your ideas are pretty wet, when it comes right down to it.'

'All right. You think of something. Personally, I still don't see what
all the bother's about.'

Vicky glanced at Ina, still terrified, her eyes wavering back and forth
as she stared uncomprehendingly at first one, and then the other. She
said, 'Ina's just sixteen. She's got about sixty years of life ahead of
her. At the moment, she doesn't know anything at all. If she's sent back
to England in disgrace to that aunt of hers, she never _will_ know
anything. She's got to stay here, live this thing down, and be made to
understand it a little'. She paused, then sighed, and went on with a
half-smile, 'I suppose the best thing is for me to take her loot down to
the study and tell the whole story. If Ina does it, she'll only get in
wrong from the beginning. Besides, I know her, and her background, much
better than she does herself... I can explain it better. I know I've
done enough butting in to last a lifetime, but I don't see any way of
getting around it.'

'I think that's a rotten idea,' said Theodora.

'It seems to be about the best thing you or I can think up,' she said
quietly.

'Why doesn't Ina _really_ do something for you at last?' demanded
Theodora, turning to look at the little girl on the bed, though she was
still talking to Vicky. 'Why doesn't she go down there, tell Mlle
Tourain she wanted a new pair of skis or something, and leave you out of
it?'

Ina swallowed. She turned her head, and said with unusual decision, her
eyes on Vicky's face, 'All right. I'll do it. I think Teddy's right.'

Vicky smiled at her. 'I won't let you do it, Ina.'

'Of course you'll let her do it,' said Theodora impatiently.

'No.' She shook her head. 'I won't, and that's final.'

'Vicky,' said Theodora, leaning forward and speaking with an odd catch
in her voice, 'I know how much this place means to you. I know how much
you want to be allowed to stay, and live like ordinary people. I know
that... that you haven't... any place to go, and that the...
the few people there are in the world who... who... care about
you, are all here...'

'Stop it, Ted,' said Vicky.

'All right.' There was a brief silence, then Theodora said, 'Mlle
Tourain won't pay the slightest attention to what you know about Ina,
what you think about her and about this whole business, and what you
think ought to be done. She'll just resent it. Don't you know that?'

'Yes,' said Vicky. Her face was more drawn than ever, but she went on,
matter-of-factly, 'But under other circumstances, she'd listen. She'd
listen to me if I weren't... one of her pupils. And if I were to...
to give her a choice between Ina and me... she'd take Ina.
Wouldn't she?' asked Vicky. And as Theodora said nothing, 'Wouldn't she,
Teddy?'

'I think you're a sap,' said Theodora. And glancing down at her
wrist-watch, 'I'll stay here with Ina till eleven-thirty. That gives you
half an hour, before I bring her down,' and as Vicky went out the door,
a few moments later, and Theodora began to cry, she remarked to Ina who
was staring at her, never having seen Theodora in tears before, 'Well,
do I look so funny? Maybe I do, but I've got something to cry about,
even if you haven't... Oh, Vicky,' she sobbed into Vicky's pillow,
'You ass! You bloody ass!'

2

Vicky saw the headmistress's startled, angry look as she laid the notes
on the desk. She glanced at the fat, good-natured and harassed
detective, at Ida, whose turn it was to be questioned, then back at Mlle
Tourain. 'Might I... speak to you... alone? I've just... found
out... who's been... stealing. That's the money there.'

Amlie Tourain said brusquely, '_You_ have just found out! Why didn't
you do your investigating a little sooner?' and turning to the
detective, 'You must excuse me, Monsieur. This girl is the worst problem
I have to contend with. I'm sorry she's given you all this trouble for
nothing. You may go, Ida.'

The detective nodded solemnly, picked up his note-book, and with a
disapproving glance at the small, dark-haired girl standing by the desk,
followed Ida into the hall. The headmistress ordered the remaining girls
back to their rooms and returned to her desk, her breathing audible in
the silent study as she made a desperate effort to control her temper.
'Well? Perhaps you'll be good enough to enlighten me?'

She said, 'Please... may I sit down... I'm almost... done up...'

'No,' she snapped, 'Stand up!'

She said, drawing a long breath, 'It's my room-mate, Ina Barren. I only
found out a few minutes ago. She was evidently down here, with the rest
of the girls in line, and got panic-stricken. She came up to our room...
and I found out then. I should certainly not have said... not have...
kept it to myself with Ilse... and Anna... if I had...'

'You don't need to bother with all that, Vicky,' she said, her lip
curling. 'There have been too many other instances of your... taking
it upon yourself... to keep back many things which I should have been
told.'

'I'm sorry.'

'It's a little late to be sorry. Really, I've had about as much of you
as I can stand. However, since it all seems to involve you more or less
indirectly, I don't see that there's anything to be done about it at the
moment. Why isn't Ina herself here? Is _she_ hiding behind your skirts
too?'

'No. I wanted to try and... and explain it for her. I felt I ought
to. She... she did it for me. She wanted to buy me something... a
watch, as a matter of fact. She hasn't any money of her own. She's...
too fond of me... much too fond of me. Her mother died when she was
very young; her father lives in Ceylon. She's been brought up by an aunt
who has been much too strict and unkind to her, and who doesn't seem
to... to love her at all. The result is that after years and years of
frustrated affection, she has poured all her feelings on to me...'
she stopped. Somehow she must try to be more coherent. A moment later
she began again, speaking slowly and carefully, trying to make the
headmistress see Ina and her background as _she_ saw it, so that she
would understand.

The headmistress said nothing. She sat and watched Vicky for fifteen
minutes, obsessed with the idea that she must get rid of this girl or
she could do nothing. She could cope with everything and everyone else,
but she could do nothing with Vicky. It was not a personal animosity; it
was something far more subtle and more troubling. What made Vicky so
strange, so utterly unlike everyone else? What _was_ she?

Mlle Tourain swept aside the problem of Ina Barren, and continued to
watch Vicky's face, puzzled and ill at ease. She interrupted Vicky a
moment later to say almost roughly, 'Sit down, for heaven's sake',
becoming aware of the girl's unsteadiness. She seemed to be almost
wavering on her feet. Vicky sank down into the nearest chair and
continued to talk about Ina Barren in a tone so level, in a voice which
was pitched so low that Amlie Tourain could hardly follow what she was
saying. Actually, the headmistress was making almost no effort in any
case, for her mind was concentrated upon the personality of the girl
before her.

She was trying to sort but what little she actually knew about Vicky,
from pure hearsay, and discovered with a slight shock that she _knew_
absolutely nothing except that the girl came from Toronto, Canada, that
her father was an archaeologist on an expedition in central Turkey, and
that she paid her own bills. The headmistress tried to remember how it
had happened that Vicky had not given more personal information when she
arrived. Had she just appeared at the door? No, that was not it; she had
telephoned first, and then come to see Mlle Tourain. It was the first
day of school and the headmistress had been too busy to address more
than a few conventional remarks to the girl, and then rush out to attend
to a more recent arrival. She thought that Vicky had gone away and
returned some time later with her bags; all she was actually sure of,
all that she could recall from the hazy days of the previous September
was that Vicky was there at meals and occasionally visible in the halls,
quiet, unobtrusive and inconspicuous.

The headmistress shook her head in perplexity; none of this served as
any sort of explanation for Vicky Morrison, and she was impossible to
question. Amlie Tourain could conceive of no one with so little
sensibility that he or she could ask, without blushing, 'What are you?
What kind of life have you led?' No, no, she thought, jerking
impatiently in her chair and staring at the wall behind Vicky's head,
that could not be considered. She became aware of the girl's voice
again, and once more tried to keep her mind on what she was saying.

Mlle Tourain had undoubtedly realized that Ina was _une hysterique_, and
that she was a case for a psychologist. She was certain that Mlle
Tourain knew that as well as she did, and the headmistress must excuse
her impertinence in assuming that she did not know and attempting to
give as full an explanation of Ina's background as was possible, for
she, Vicky, had lived with Ina for four months and had come to
understand her, for that reason, perhaps more completely than anyone
else.

If Ina were expelled and sent back to England her aunt would never let
her hear the end of it; she might very well be useless to herself and
everyone else from then on. Her aunt was evidently a woman of little
imagination; she would doubtless have been an excellent guardian for an
insensitive girl, but she had already almost broken Ina, who was
anything but insensitive, who was starved of affection and therefore
emotionally unbalanced. She herself had had to make an almost continuous
effort to hold off the girl by speaking to her less kindly than she
felt, chiefly because Ina overflowed with the affection which under
normal circumstances would have found an outlet in her family. She had
attached herself to Vicky because she needed someone on whom she could
lavish that affection. Ina's feeling for herself had now, however, gone
beyond all reasonable bounds and seemed something like an emotional
fixation. There appeared to be only one solution to the problem...
that she, Vicky, should go. If it were convenient for Mlle Tourain, she
would pack her belongings and leave immediately after lunch.

Vicky stopped, and waited. She was giving the headmistress a way out.
Amlie Tourain's eyes swung back to her face, and for a moment they
looked at each other, a stout middle-aged woman in dusty brown, a young,
dark-haired girl in a black dress, who sat gripping each arm of her
leather-covered chair, as she saw that beneath her deliberately
impersonal look, the headmistress was relieved. And rather grateful,
thought Vicky, with a brief, wry little smile.

The tension which had always existed between them snapped suddenly.
Amlie Tourain said, 'So you know me as well as you know everyone else.
I wondered if you did. How old are you, Vicky?'

'Twenty-one, Mlle Tourain.'

'Where did you learn so much?'

'I had a Classical training,' said Vicky, looking rather mischievous.

The headmistress laughed. 'So had I, but, in some respects at least, I
haven't learned as much from books as you.' She was silent a moment,
then said, looking across her desk at the girl who was sitting with her
head against the back of her chair, 'You can say what you like now,
Vicky. You know a great deal more about this than I do. What shall I do
with Ina?'

'Have her with you as much as you can,' she said quickly. 'Perhaps
there's some little job she could do in here three or four times a
week... both as a punishment, and also because it would give you a
chance to talk to her without seeming to... to be paying too much
attention to her. She needs an impersonal contact with someone much
older and much wiser than herself, and it would be good for her to
know that there was a job which depended on her for being done.
I think she should have as much responsibility as she can take.'
She glanced at the headmistress and said apologetically,
'I... naturally I'm no authority on...'

'It's all right,' she interrupted. And a moment later, 'Tell me
something. I don't want to... to trouble you, but if you could
explain something to me... What _did_ Rosalie think about, Vicky?'
remembering that a long time ago... a very long time ago!... she
had said to Mary Ellerton that she supposed she would, in the end, have
to ask Vicky for information about Rosalie.

Vicky fought down an impulse to avoid the question, as she would have
done before, realizing that now it would be a kindness to the living to
talk. She said slowly, 'You know that Rosalie was very devout, and knew
none but the religious life until, a little more than a year ago, her
mother eloped with a French business man in Montreal, and took Rosalie
with her to Paris. The three of them lived in an apartment there.
Rosalie had no idea of it all until one night, when she found out...
she saw her mother in the man's arms. It was, of course, the most
horrible kind of shock. She came gradually to a point afterwards where
she believed that all life was rooted in evil and ugliness... it was
the scarlet touch, which was unendurable to her. She did not want to
live. I think perhaps it was as well she died, for she had nothing to go
on... no sense of the beauty of ordinary human things'. And a moment
later, when she had steadied her voice, 'Nothing in her past had led up
to anything. I mean, we gather impressions, experiences, a little wisdom
and a great deal of enjoyment, each day we live, from which our later
life is an outgrowth. Living should be a process of continual
enrichment, and there should be no break. Rosalie's sixteen years,
however, were a series of distorted and violent impressions and
experiences, so far as everything which did not have to do with the
convent was concerned... impressions and experiences which led to
nothing of truth, and nothing of value. When she came here she had only
her faith in God, and her soul certainly belonged more in heaven than it
belonged on earth.' She dropped her eyes, so that the headmistress
should not see the tears in them, and said, 'I'm trying... to
persuade... myself.'

'Yes,' said Mlle Tourain, her face tense. 'I know that, Vicky. I need
that... persuasion... even more than you.'

'I suppose we all do,' she said, smiling a little. She looked across the
desk at the headmistress, sitting just behind the light which streamed
through the french windows. The face she saw was strong; the whole
figure of the woman much too uncompromising for this room with its
trivial attempt at ornament, with its potpourri jars, its cactus plants,
and its china shepherdesses. Only the big desk seemed to have any
relation to her personality; the rest of the room appeared to be a
casual and irrelevant background, as she might pause in the street with
a cake-shop behind her. 'Are you going to stay, Mlle Tourain?' asked
Vicky on an impulse.

'Stay?' she repeated in astonishment. She had not imagined that anyone
knew of the conflict within her, never having realized that it was
obvious to every sympathetic observer. 'I don't know,' she said,
unwonted discouragement showing in her face.

'How is Mlle d'Ormonde?'

'She's had a relapse.'

'Oh, I'm sorry, Mademoiselle.'

'You were saying that one's future is the logical outgrowth of one's
past, and you were right. It is. Usually, as you look back, you realize
that there have been no wild inconsistencies; rather, everything has
been interrelated and dependent upon everything else.' She glanced
briefly at Vicky, then lowered her eyes to the brass ink-pot, knowing
that the girl had understood her. In the back of her mind was a fleeting
amazement that after all this time, it had only taken a few minutes with
Vicky to make it clear to her why it was that everyone talked to her
without self-consciousness and without restraint. The headmistress
half-smiled to herself as she remembered that conversation with Mary
after the emergency staff-meeting on Thursday afternoon... only two
days before. She had said irritably, 'The girl apparently concerns
herself with everyone and everything.' Now, once more, she remembered a
few words of Mary Ellerton's... were they spoken in answer to that
statement which the headmistress now realized was ridiculous?
Ridiculous, she added to herself, because here _she_ was, doing
precisely what everyone else had done... Anyhow, Mary... Miss
Ellerton... had said 'She has the gift of self-dismissal', which was,
perhaps, as near as anyone would ever come to explaining Vicky.

She said suddenly, 'If, some time in the future, you should feel like
coming back, Vicky...' then stopped. The future! Where would she
herself be, five years from now, ten years from now? Would she still be
here, struggling to bring order into this little world which could not
but reflect the chaos of the great world which surrounded it on all
sides; battling with problems which had no solution, constantly striving
for the impossible? These girls were returning to their homes and all
their differing backgrounds, countries, ways of thought and ways of
living; they would always return to them... why should she concern
herself with them? What was one or two years in a foreign country
compared to seventy in one's own? Besides that, even supposing that she
and Mary Ellerton revised the whole curriculum and created a fresh
basis, these girls would still come on the _old_ basis... would still
come to be 'finished', whatever, Blessed Saints, that word might mean.
Finished! One was never finished. Here she was, at fifty-eight,
beginning the gigantic task of running a girls' school, though, until
four years ago, her life had run towards an entirely different
conclusion.

In the old days before 1930 the school had not existed for her, save on
those days... once or twice a month... when Jeanne would come to
tea in Amlie Tourain's little house down the lane from Avenue
Ruchonnet, and would talk about one Nancy O'Brien who was constantly in
mischief, or someone named Antoinette something-or-other who came from
Nantes and who was incurably homesick... what did it all matter,
Amlie Tourain had asked herself in those days. It was all very far
away; she had only been a few times to Pensionnat les Ormes, and had
disliked intensely the sudden outburst of noise when there was a
clattering of feet on the stairs, or the bell... that dreadful bell...
rang for classes. In recent years she had avoided going there at
all, and had begged her cousin to come to her house down the lane when
she wished to see her. The school had always faded from her mind as soon
as the door closed behind Jeanne, and Amlie Tourain was once more at
work in her study. Until her cousin's next visit, it remained vaguely in
the back of her mind, a large stone and brick building half-way up the
hill behind Lausanne which was filled with noisy, bewildering young
girls who came and went each year and who were, most strangely, the
entire and sole preoccupation of her cousin, Jeanne d'Ormonde.

There had come a day in the spring of 1930 when she was to call a taxi
and ride up to the school in answer to a summons from Jeanne, but she
had spent the morning digging in her garden and planting hyacinths along
the flagged path; she wanted them to grow in the grass here and there,
not to be arranged in straight stiff rows.

Her life, her quiet orderly life! What had become of it? Here there was
no time for thought, no time for study and learning; here no time for
peace, but merely a succession of days which she spent, constantly
interrupted in her hopeless, self-imposed task of emptying the ocean
with a sieve. Someone else could do it as well; someone else could
probably do it much better. Why had Jeanne stood in the hall with the
nurse holding the door open, waiting for her to come, and said, 'Promise
me that you'll stay until I come back, Amlie. If I should not come back
at all, think of me; remember that I have been here for many years,
because _I_ thought it was a task worth doing. I should not rest
if I...' She had hurried out the door with the sentence uncompleted,
leaving the stout figure standing silently in the hall behind her,
saddled with fifty-odd girls who had come, Blessed, Blessed Saints, to
be 'finished'.

Her mind returned to the girl sitting across the desk from her; she said
unexpectedly, 'I think these past two days have been the strangest I've
ever known, Vicky, and perhaps you are the strangest part of all.'

She smiled again. 'I'm sorry I've been such a nuisance. I was...
attempting the impossible. I know that now.' She turned her head and
looked out the window, trying to force herself to realize that in one
hour, two hours, she would be standing on the steps of the school with
nowhere to go. What would she tell the taxi-driver? She was not mentally
ready to leave yet; she dreaded the idea of being alone, and of saying
good-bye to her only friends. Once away from the school, there would be
nothing left of Rosalie but the memory. She had an impulse to say, 'I
won't go! I won't go!' to refuse to take the responsibility for herself,
to allow herself to break down, just once. No one had ever said to her,
'Vicky, are you happy?' or 'Vicky, can I help?' God, God, she said, her
fists doubling up on the arms of her chair, am I ever to find a home on
this earth? Am I going to be alone as long as I live? No answer came to
her from the silent room, and a moment later she relaxed, her head
falling against the back of the chair.

There was a knock on the door, and an appreciable length of time after
Mlle Tourain's 'Come in!' it opened, and Anna stood there with the empty
hall behind her. As though some invisible voice were prompting her, she
walked the few steps to the desk and stopped, saying nothing.

The headmistress stood up hastily, without knowing why she did it. 'What
is it, Anna?' she asked, her voice shaking with sudden fear.

In a voice which she had carefully emptied of all emotion during that
moment when she had stood outside the door with her hand on the knob,
she said, 'My father was arrested in Nrdlingen on Thursday morning,
just before sunrise. There is no question about the trial. He comes
before the Military Tribunal on Monday; he will be... executed...
on Tuesday morning. He was working for the overthrow of the Nazi
government. I am leaving... this afternoon... with... a sister...
from my convent in Munich.' She made no movement as though she
wished to go, now that she had finished, but remained motionless like a
blind person waiting for a guiding touch, her face turned towards the
light coming from the windows.

The headmistress struggled to speak, gripping her desk with both hands.
She managed to say at last, 'Anna, I can't think of... anything...
that would be any... help... to you, except that... if there's
anything I can do for you now... or at any time later on in your life...
I should be glad.' She could go no further, and turning abruptly,
went over to the window. 'Vicky, go upstairs with Anna. I will be up in
a moment,' she said unsteadily, searching in the pocket of her dress for
her handkerchief. She heard them go out, and leaning against the glass,
began to cry for the first time in many years.

She took hold of herself at last as one of the maids knocked on the door
and entered with a telegram. The girl saw such a look on Mlle Tourain's
face as she had never seen before, and waited in alarm, one hand half
held out to give the headmistress support if she should need it, while
she read the telegram. A moment later, with her face unchanged except
for a sudden tightening of the muscles around her mouth, she muttered
thanks to the girl for waiting, and putting the telegram down, went out,
followed by the maid. It lay face up on the desk, its eight significant
words scrawled across the sheet in the handwriting of the telegraph
operator down on Place St. Franois: 'Mademoiselle d'Ormonde died at
ten-thirty this morning.'




CHAPTER XI


1

A little later Vicky left Anna, still controlled and speaking
unemotionally to Mlle Tourain, and started on a search for Theodora and
Mary Ellerton. She found Mary at last in her room, stretched out on her
bed sound asleep, and went out, closing the door quietly, not wishing to
disturb her. She decided to see each member of the staff... leaving
her favourite, Mlle Lemaitre, to the last... and then do her brief
packing. Mary would probably be awake by that time. But where was
Theodora? No one seemed to know. She asked Mlle Devaux, Miss Williams,
and Mlle Dupraix as she said good-bye to each in turn; none of them had
seen her.

Still puzzled by Theodora's complete disappearance, she knocked on Mlle
Lemaitre's door and entered the Frenchwoman's room in answer to her
sharp 'Entrez!' She was sitting in a rocking-chair which she had
procured from the attic some time before, reading with her horn-rimmed
glasses slipping as usual down her nose. She was wearing a shabby,
unbecoming black dress and looked tired, with her face drawn and
pinched, for she had been sleeping badly. Only her black eyes retained
their light and energy, the rest of her face and body was wasted and
colourless.

Vicky had spent a great many hours in Mlle Lemaitre's room and took her
accustomed place on the bed automatically; there was nowhere else she
could sit, for the room was very narrow, with the bed occupying almost
the whole wall on the left of the door, a desk was placed at a slight
angle to it across the corner by the window, and the remainder of the
space was taken by a large bureau, a cupboard door, and Mlle Lemaitre's
rocking-chair. The size of the room seemed further diminished by the
clutter of paper-backed books and pamphlets which overflowed from the
bookcase under the window to the top of the desk, the bureau, and even
the floor. Vicky, looking about this room which she would never see
again, asked herself once more how many rooms like this Mlle Lemaitre
had lived in... small, dusty, disorderly rooms, up under the eaves...
rooms in Clermont, where she had been brought up and where she had
taught in the local school; rooms in the Quartier Latin, which she had
occupied during her years at the Sorbonne, in Passy, where again she had
taught school, in various parts of Italy during holidays, and now, in
Pensionnat Les Ormes.

'Your crocuses look as though they'll be out early this year,' said
Vicky, glancing at the row of little pots on the windowsill.

'Yes. The light is good. What are you here for, young lady?'

'I came to say good-bye. I...'

'Good-bye!'

'Yes. I'm leaving this afternoon.'

'Oh.' That was all Mlle Lemaitre said for a moment, lowering her eyes to
follow the barely distinguishable chain of roses in the threadworn strip
of carpet which ran between the bed and the desk. A moment later, still
looking at the floor, she observed matter-of-factly, 'Of course you've
been impossible.'

'Yes,' said Vicky. 'I don't see how I could have done anything else,
though. The trouble is that I... I'm much too real, to other people.
I exist much more clearly in their minds than I do in my own... I
mean that I don't _want_ to... to be a bother...'

'You're too old, Vicky,' she interrupted, looking at her directly now.
'Sometimes I think you were born old. You're so much wiser than you
should be at your age. I'm afraid you're going to have this sort of
experience time and again. It isn't only your queer background, and the
fact that you're parents didn't trouble to legitimize you... Yes, my
dear, I guessed that months ago... It's you. Thank God!'

'You've always overrated me, Mlle Lemaitre.'

'I could not overrate you,' she said simply. 'And I'm glad to have known
you. It isn't often one meets people of whom one can say that... I'm
glad to have known you...' she repeated, looking upwards. Then she
went on, with her old acidity, 'I suppose you will spend the next fifty
years frittering away your time, dabbling in this and that?'

'I hadn't intended to,' she said with amusement.

'See that you don't, then. It's very easy, though, and you'd better be
careful. You think now, perhaps, why should I work and work? What do I
gain in the end? But Vicky, you won't be such a fool, will you? You must
submerge yourself in something else... it is a necessity of the human
spirit. Some women manage to submerge themselves in their husbands, but
that must be rather difficult for a woman of any intelligence.'

Vicky was accustomed to that kind of dry cynicism from Isabelle
Lemaitre, and merely smiled in answer. A moment later she said, 'I don't
really know yet what I'll do.'

'Go to the Sorbonne.'

'I'm not sure that I want to.'

'Why not?'

'My mind is neither scholarly nor academic.'

She said shortly, 'It's possible that your mind might become one or the
other with a little encouragement', but she said it without conviction.

'I thought of the Paris Conservatoire,' said Vicky tentatively.

'Music! No, no. You're not good enough. You would only be a dilettante,
one of those innumerable young girls no one had ever heard of, who
manage one recital at great expense, and then starve to death. No, my
dear. Save your piano for your spare time.'

Seeing the anxiety in those over-brilliant black eyes Vicky said, 'I
haven't had time to make up my mind yet, Mlle Lemaitre. You know as well
as I do that I have no special talents...'

'You have a fine mind,' she said shortly. And with a curious
unsteadiness in her voice, 'You have a very unusual talent for people,
Vicky, which is perhaps more.' She sighed, then said, 'It's your
decision in any case... your life... your life. I do not want to
live it for you; I am glad that my own has few years to go. I would not
be young now, in these days, even if I could.'

'Why, Mlle Lemaitre?'

She said slowly, 'I think that human beings have always known periods
when life was terrifying, but I doubt if those periods were ever so
frequent, or so long, as they are now. There is nothing in the world so
dangerous, or so overwhelming as stupidity; perhaps there is no more of
it now than there has been at any time, but I do not think the witless
of past generations had so much power. The powers of darkness are the
powers of misdirected knowledge...' And a moment later, with a barely
perceptible shrug, 'It has really been most illuminating, this
experience of observing the world at close quarters... see what a
muddle we are all in, here, in this cross-section of life, and you begin
to understand the world a little.'

She suddenly recalled Vicky's remark that she had not yet made up her
mind what she was going to do. 'Where are you going from here?' she
demanded abruptly.

'I don't know,' said Vicky.

'You don't know!' she repeated, aghast, and began to suggest _pensions_
in Lausanne, Paris, the Italian Lakes, about which she knew nothing at
first hand but which she vaguely remembered having heard about from
respectable-appearing fellow-travellers in the past. Then she was off on
one of her frequent tirades against the disasters which befall
unchaperoned young girls, but checked herself just as she got well under
way, suddenly realizing that it was no use... indeed it was cruel...
to worry the girl about situations which she could not help. Who
was to chaperon the child?

Vicky shook her head. It had not occurred to her until now that she was
rather young to be turned loose in the world. It had not occurred to
anyone else either, even to Mlle Tourain. Mlle Lemaitre stated that
since such was the case, she herself would illuminate the headmistress
on the subject.

Vicky objected. 'If you do that she'll only keep me here and everything
will be more awkward than ever. I've already gone past it... don't
you see that? I can't go back now. Besides that, does it make any
difference whether I'm twenty-one, or twenty-one and a half, or
twenty-two, when I leave?'

'Yes, because you would be a little older at least.'

'You can't set down an arbitrary age-limit like that, Mlle Lemaitre.'

'No, I suppose not,' she said. And after a brief pause, with renewed
concern, 'I had not thought that it was possible for anyone to be so...
so alone... so rootless'. She looked at Vicky for a moment in silence,
then she rose to her feet and taking a small earthenware jug from
the bureau, began to water her crocuses. She did not wish Vicky to
see her so upset. Her affection for Vicky was inexplicable; it was not
in the least maternal, thought Isabelle Lemaitre, for she had no desire
to see that Vicky kept her feet dry and wore woollen underwear, and she
told herself that she would go mad if she were forced to live with the
girl. Yet her heart and her thoughts were more with Vicky than they had
ever been with anyone else.

She put down the jug on the floor, then returned to her rocking-chair.
She sat motionless, looking critically at Vicky's face and apparently
unaware of the embarrassment which she created in its owner by doing so.
If anyone had said to her that Vicky was beautiful, she would have
replied impatiently, 'Yes, yes, of course she is!' irritated by a
statement of what she considered the obvious and the trivial, exactly as
she would have been irritated if someone had remarked in her hearing
that Voltaire was ugly. She dismissed the girl's beauty as irrelevant,
which it was not, for it was the outward aspect of an inner harmony of
character and spirit. Her features were good, but not remarkable. Her
forehead, which no one but Isabelle Lemaitre had ever noticed, was her
one native asset; it was moulded in a way which was more masculine than
feminine, high and broad, with three horizontal lines already etched on
it.

She said at last, 'I don't see any weakness in you, Vicky. I don't think
I need to worry,' and made one of her indescribable French noises with
which she invariably signified that she was finished and well satisfied
with her present task. It was half 'huh', and half 'hein', and it
belonged to herself; a thousand girls and half a hundred fellow-students
at the Sorbonne had tried and failed to imitate it.

She got up and opened the door. She said, as Vicky went out, 'I shall
see you in Paris next year, perhaps. You can always get my address from
Monsieur Bernard...'

'Then you...'

'I also am leaving. It seems incredible to me that I should have
hesitated this long. There is no comparison between Paris and Lausanne
as cities to live in... or die in,' she added, with another shrug.
And seeing a flash of pity in Vicky's face, 'Ma chre, I do not mind
dying. Death,' said Isabella Lemaitre, 'will be interesting. Most
interesting'.

2

Mary came into Vicky's room just as she was closing her trunk, having
packed all the lunch hour. She said, 'Your records, Vicky; I just
retrieved them from Mlle Dupraix,' and helped her to do them up one by
one in newspaper ready for travel, remarking as the last record was
sandwiched in among the books, 'I rather imagine that my first action as
assistant head will be to give Mlle Dupraix the sack.'

'Assistant head?' repeated Vicky in astonishment.

'That's Mlle Tourain's latest idea. She just informed me of it a moment
ago. Incidentally...'

'Yes?'

'Jeanne d'Ormonde's dead.'

'Oh,' said Vicky, straightening up and staring at the wall. 'So what
does Mlle Tourain do?'

'She sits behind her desk, watching a small house off Avenue Ruchonnet
go up in smoke,' said Mary. And a moment later, 'How good is your
Shakespeare?'

'Oh... so-so,' said Vicky. 'Why?'

'I've been thinking of something all morning,' she said, and looking
straight ahead of her, repeated softly:

    '"You do look, my son, in a moved sort,
    As if you were dismayed; be cheerful, sir.
    Our revels now are ended; these our actors
    As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
    Are melted into air, into thin air;
    And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
    The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
    The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
    Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
    And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
    Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
    As dreams are made on, and our little life
    Is rounded with a sleep."'

She sat down on the bed and said, giving up all effort to be cheerful,
'I'm going to go mad without you, Vicky'.

'No, darling,' said Vicky, locking her trunk. 'You've too much to do.
Besides, we'll be seeing each other at Easter. I'll be...' She
laughed. 'Of course, I keep forgetting that. I'm darned if I know where
I'll be!'

'But you can't just leave like this!'

'I'm going to prove it can be done by doing it.'

'Where are you going to spend the night?' she demanded.

'At the Palace, I suppose, with Juan and Consuelo... I don't know.
Hotels are beyond my means, generally speaking.'

'But, Vicky...'

'Mary, please don't start feeling sorry for me or I'll burst into tears.
I've cried so much during the past twenty-four hours that I'm almost
melting anyhow. That's the trouble with being a person who finds it
rather difficult to cry properly, once you start you can't stop.'

There was a knock on the door and two cartage men appeared. She said, in
answer to their question, 'Take it to the station. I'll call for it
later.' She found some money in her purse, gave it to them, and watched
them carry out her trunk in silence. Then she took down her coat, hat
and purse and laid them on Ina's bed.

'My gloves,' she said, and began to search distractedly through bureau
and cupboard drawers while Mary looked at her, weighed down by the
knowledge that something of herself would go with Vicky. She sat with
her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, her legs swinging
from the high bed, and seemed absurdly young. Vicky, catching sight of
her in brief glimpses as she turned from one drawer to the next, felt
herself beginning to share Mary's terror of the school.

She found her gloves at last in the pocket of her coat, and sat down on
Ina's bed. 'I don't know what to do,' she said. 'I ordered that taxi for
two-thirty, it's twenty past now, and still no Teddy. Was she at lunch?'

'No,' said Mary. 'Everyone was too upset to notice.'

'Where _is_ she then?' demanded Vicky. 'I've combed the whole school.
She's simply disappeared. You don't suppose that she's decamped, do
you?'

'No,' said Mary. 'I would put nothing past her _except_ leaving without
you. She'd never do that.' She sat up straight, as though she were
trying to shake off her unhappiness, and said, 'Well, I _shall_ see you
at Easter, anyhow, with or without my husband. You should get along well
together... he's of a literary turn of mind too, and he paints quite
well. That's his reason for going to Sicily, I suppose.'

'All the best men seem to end up there,' said Vicky. 'Or all the worst,'
she added, smiling rather mirthlessly to herself.

Mary stared at her. 'Why did you say that?'

'I don't know why I said it,' she replied, looking a little startled. 'I
was referring to the man whom Theodora is pleased to describe as "That
wet smack, your ex-boy friend", not to your husband.'

'Do you think anyone is ever going to be able to polish up Teddy's
English?' asked Mary, shuddering.

Vicky laughed. 'It seems unlikely. By the way, what's your husband's
name?' she asked idly. 'Do you know that all the time I've known you,
you've never mentioned him except as "my husband", or "Barry".'

'It's Gilchrist,' she answered.

'What!'

'Gilchrist,' she repeated.

'What's... his... first name?'

'Christopher. Barry's his second name... I'm the only one who calls
him that. I knew someone once named "Christopher", whom I simply
hated... you know, just one of those silly things. He didn't mind
being re-named, fortunately.' She looked at Vicky, and said, 'What's
the matter? Why do you... what _is_ it, Vicky?'

'Nothing,' she said, moistening her lip.

'You look so queer,' said Mary, in a voice which was almost frightened.

'Do I?'

'Yes... I... I...' She shook her head. 'You didn't... you didn't...
meet him, or anything, did you, Vicky? Before school opened... before
he went away?'

'No,' she said steadily. 'I didn't know him, Mary.'

'Are you sure? You didn't... hear anything... about him?'

'No! No!' she said passionately. 'How could I? There are so many people
in Lausanne...'

'Oh, I don't know... it's pretty small. Sooner or later one seems to
run into all the foreign colony at the Beau Rivage or the Palace, or
hear them mentioned.'

'No... I... I didn't,' she said.

'Teddy ran into him once or twice, I think. She said something about it
ages ago... but I...'

'Teddy knows everyone. She was here all summer with her mother.' She had
to avert this thing in some way; she might have been arguing with God as
she thought, You can't expect me to tell her the truth. Someone else
will do it sooner or later... someone else. He's no good, he'll never
be any good... there'll always be... someone else. But how could
she let Mary go on believing that in the spring... in the spring, she
repeated to herself in sudden horror, that was what he had said to
_her_. Why was it that she had to answer so many fearful questions; what
curse was this which linked her with other people, and loaded her with
such responsibility? This frightful confusion... this frightful
confusion... Her mind kept beating out the words over and over again,
until she saw that Mary was staring at her, saw her start forward and
cross the room, felt her gripping her arms and heard her say

'Vicky, what are you trying not to tell me?'

She shook Mary off and went over to the window. She could feel Mary's
eyes on her, but she did not know what to do or what to say. There was
the alternative of saying nothing and allowing Mary to go on in her
unjustified faith, or of destroying this friendship. With that knowledge
between them... that knowledge which would block both their minds...
Mary could never bear to see her again. Vicky noticed that one of
her hyacinths was sprouting and wondered why such a thing should insert
itself into her mind now. She had grown those hyacinths for Rosalie;
now, Rosalie was dead. She would leave them behind for Mary; Mary loved
hyacinths, though she might not want these... she might not want
these. He had said, 'In the spring', never thinking that his wife might
come to Lausanne, and turn his little, convenient life into a distorted,
drawing-room comedy.

She turned at last, her face white, and said, 'Yes, I knew him, Mary.'

Mary continued to stand motionless by Ina's bed, then after a while
moved back until she was leaning against it, without taking her eyes
from Vicky's face. She was seeing not her friend... her greatest
friend, one part of her mind realized, for she knew without really
seeing Vicky's face how little she could endure this, how much agony of
mind and heart those five words had cost her... but two people in a
canoe on the Thames. The man was saying to the girl that he loved her,
resting his arms on the paddle which lay across the gunwales. Ridiculous
to remember that now!

Her mind began to clear a moment later and she said oddly, 'You know,
Vicky... I think I'm going to get over this. Do you know why? It's
because, though I was fool enough to forgive him for myself, I'll never
forgive him... for you'. The net had dropped down on her now, and she
knew it. She said, 'Christopher Gilchrist is out, one wife. Mlle Tourain
is in, one assistant. Which balances the score a little for them, though
not for me, yet. I suppose, in a while...' She stopped, looking into
the future in one of those rare moments of foresight. She would go back
to London in the summer, perhaps at Christmas and Easter as well, but
everywhere she went she would see the school, standing on its hill-side,
never again quite happy when she was there, never again quite happy when
she was away from it. What strange mad compulsion was this which made
her stay where she could be of some use? Was it another baseless fabric
which she was weaving to replace the old?

She almost thought that she would ask Vicky, and then decided to leave
it until she saw her at Easter. They went downstairs together, and Vicky
said good-bye to the headmistress, although that had really been done
earlier in the day. They reached the front door, opened it, and saw in
the courtyard a taxi, a taxi-driver who was eyeing eleven pieces of
expensive luggage in disgust, and Theodora Cohen.

'Teddy,' said Vicky in astonishment. 'Where on earth were you?'

'In the trunk-room. Packing,' she added vaguely.

'Packing?'

'Packing,' she repeated patiently. 'You know, putting things in trunks.'

'What for?' asked Mary.

She looked from one to the other with frank disapproval. 'You know, you
two ask the silliest questions. Why does one pack? Because one goes from
place to place and extra clothing is essential both en route and
following arrival.'

'Yes, but Teddy,' said Vicky helplessly. 'You don't think you're coming
with me, do you?'

'No,' said Theodora. 'I know it.'

'You can't, Ted,' said Mary, but she said it without any force, having
already seen enough of this weird girl now standing before her dressed
in what she had not been able to get into her eleven pieces of
luggage... a mink coat, a black velvet turban with a diamond clip,
a green wool sweater combined somewhat unsuccessfully with a bright blue
skirt, and high-heeled brocade evening sandals, with a single, white
elbow-length kid glove clutched in her left hand... to doubt if there
was anything that Theodora could not do. 'What about Mlle Tourain?'

'I put it up to her like this, "Mlle Tourain", I said, "can I go
peaceably or must I employ force?" "Go," said Mlle Tourain to me,
"Go," she said, "And my blessings be upon you, dear child..."'

'Bunk,' remarked Vicky. 'Tell us the truth.'

'That is substantially the truth. Are you admiring my costume? Chic,
isn't it?... all the latest things from various parts of the
Galleries Lafayette.' She glanced up at Vicky, standing above her on the
steps and looking as though she might cry. She said hurriedly to the
taxi-driver, 'Well, my good man, you might just as well deal with those
bags now, because you'll have to sooner or later in any case.'

'I have a feeling,' said Vicky, observing the taxi-driver's expression
as he hurled one bag after another on top of his car, 'that our progress
through Europe is going to be marked by a series of brawls.'

They got into the car a few minutes later, leaving Mary watching them
from the doorway. Vicky saw Mlle Tourain come hurriedly into the hall
and put her arm around Mary, then the car turned the corner of the house
and started down the long drive to the gates which led out into the
world. She heard Theodora say, 'I've always wondered what it would be
like to be a lady with no destination. Here, Vick, weep into my
handkerchief, it's bigger'.

'Where to, Mademoiselle?' asked the driver.

'Singapore,' said Theodora.






[End of Swiss Sonata, by Gwethalyn Graham]
