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

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

The cla.s.s sat, breathless, all eyes on Clare.

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

Clare cut through the cl.u.s.tering adjectives.

"Stand up, please."

Resistance was over. She rose sullenly.

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

"Louder, please," said Clare.

"_But as Childe Roland turned round_----" and even Marion was laughing.... "_Turned round to look once more back to the high road_----"

"And slower."

"_To the high road_----" She stopped suddenly, a lump in her throat.

"Go on, Agatha."

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

It was surrender. Clare nodded.

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

Agatha, against her will, smiled tremulously back.

Clare, with a glance at the little figure, huddling at the foot of the table, began to read. The essay, for all its schoolgirl slips and extravagances, was unusual. The thought embodied in it, though tinged with morbidity, striking and matured. Clare did it more than justice.

Her beautiful voice made music of the crude sentences, revealed, embellished, glorified. Her own interest growing as she read, infected the cla.s.s; she swept them along with her, mutually enthusiastic. She ended abruptly, her voice like the echoes of a deep bell.

Marion broke the little pause.

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

"So did I," Clare was pleased.

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

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

But Louise, shy and glowing, broke in--

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

Clare looked at her, half frowning.

"Not yours? Your handwriting----?"

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

Clare raised a quizzical eyebrow.

"I have misinterpreted----?"

Louise was too much in earnest to be fluttered.

"I only mean--you made it sound so beautiful that it was like listening to--to an organ. I didn't bother about the words while you read. It was all colours and gold--like the things in the Venetian room. You know.

The meaning didn't matter. But I did mean something, not half so good, of course, only quite different. Horrid and grizzly like the plain he travelled through, Childe Roland. It ought to have sounded harsh and starved, like rats pattering--what I meant--not beautiful."

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

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

Louise's shy laugh was very pleasant.

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

"Atmosphere!" The girl in spectacles helped her.

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

Clare glanced at her inscrutably, and began to score the other essays.

She would get at Louise's meaning in her own way. She skimmed a couple, Agatha, be it recorded, receiving the coveted initials, before she spoke again.

"Didn't I tell you to learn _Childe Roland_, too? Ah, I thought so.

Begin, Marion, while I finish these. Two verses."

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

Then Clare put down her pen.

"'For mark!'..."

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

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

I might go on; nought else remained to do."

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

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

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