mess.

If it had been any one but Miss Hartill, with whom she had not exchanged five words, but whom she had heard discussed, nevertheless, from every conceivable and inconceivable point of view, with that accompanying profusion of anecdote of which only schoolgirl memory, so traditional as well as personal, is capable.

Miss Marsham, she had been given to understand might be head mistress, but Miss Hartill was Miss Hartill. Alwynne, accustomed as she was to the cults of a boarding-school, had ended by growing exceedingly curious. Yet when Miss Hartill had returned, a week or two late, to her post, Alwynne could not, as she phrased it, for the life of[20] her see what all the fuss was about. Miss Hartill was ordinary enough. Alwynne had looked up one morning, from an obscure corner of the Common-room, at the sound of a clicking latch, had had an impression of a tall woman, harshly outlined by the white panelled door, against which she leaned lazily as she quizzed the roomful of women. Alwynne told herself that she was not at all impressed.... This the Miss Hartill of a hundred legends? This the Olympian to whom three-fourths of the school said its prayers? Who had split the staff into an enthusiastic majority and a minority that concealed its dislike? Queer! Alwynne, shrugging her shoulders over the intricacies of a school's enthusiasms, had leaned back in her chair to watch, between amusement and contempt, the commotion that had broken out. There was a babble of welcome, a cross-fire of question and answer. And then, over the heads of the little group that had gathered about the door, a pair of keen, roving eyes had settled on herself, coolly appraising. Alwynne had been annoyed with herself for flushing under the stare. She had a swift impression of being summed up, all raw and youthful and ambitious as she was, her attitude of unwilling curiosity detected, expected even. There had been a flicker of a smile, amused, faintly insolent....

[20]

But it had all been merest impression. Miss Hartill, who had been, indeed, surrounded, inaccessible, from the instant of her entrance until the prayer bell rang, did not look her way a second time. But the impression had remained, and Alwynne, obscure in her newness and her corner, found herself reconsidering this Miss Hartill, more roused than she would confess. If she were not the Hypatia-Helen of the class-rooms, she was none the less a personality! Whether Alwynne would like her was another matter.

Alwynne, in the next few days, had not come into direct contact with Miss Hartill. She had 

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