It was Susan's voice. Susan's face was looking at her with the sweetest, kindest smile... With a start Dreda came back to herself, and as she did so half a dozen words sounded in her brain as distinctly as though spoken by a real human voice. "That is love!" said the voice. "That is the true love!" As she walked up the bare centre of the floor she was thinking not of her own triumph, but of Susan's unselfish joy; it came to her mind that Susan's triumph was greater than her own. Once on the platform, however, face to face with Mr Rawdon, with Miss Drake by his side beaming with happy smiles, conscious of being the cynosure of every eye, it was impossible not to feel a natural pride and elation. Before presenting the pile of handsomely bound volumes--ten in all--Mr Rawdon held out his hand with a very charming gesture of friendship. "Etheldreda Saxon, I congratulate you on what you have achieved in the present; I congratulate you still more on what you are going to achieve in the future! My good friend Miss Drake, knowing of old my unmethodical methods, told me not to trouble to return the manuscripts of the various essays submitted for my criticism, but before leaving home to-day I put your typed copy in my pocket, thinking that you would naturally like to have it. I return it to you now, together with these books, which, to my mingled pride and embarrassment, have been chosen for your prize. I hope and expect that the time will come when those present this afternoon may feel _it_ one of their happiest recollections that they were present on the occasion when Etheldreda Saxon received her first literary recognition." Thunderous applause. Dreda walked down the little stairway, carrying her heavy load of books with the folded manuscript slipped beneath the cover of the topmost volume. The visitors on either side beamed congratulations as she passed; on the faces of her school friends was an expression which she had never seen before--proud and _yet_ awed, affectionate yet shrinking. It was as if they said to themselves: "Who is this Dreda who has changed into a genius before our eyes? We have laughed at her, and made fun of her pretensions, and behold, they are not pretensions at all--_they are real_! We have been blind. We have never really known her as she is." The girls in the second row made way for her as she came, pulling their skirts aside, and tucking their feet beneath the bench to allow her to pass along to her seat. She saw each face quite close as she passed along--Flora, Barbara, Nancy, Norah, Grace--all smiled shyly upon her-- all except one. Norah's eyes remained hard and cold--Norah was not glad. She wanted Susan to win the prize. The clapping was dying down, and Mr Rawdon was beginning his promised address.