It did not appeal to Elizabeth, and she offered the practical suggestion that publicity, when one is not a free agent, sometimes entails unpleasant consequences. My arm was, so to speak, my own, and I might do with it what I pleased; but my hand was open to scrutiny, and there was every reason to fear that Madame Dane would disapprove of the inscription. Her arguments were unanswerable, but their very soundness repelled me. I was in no humour for sobriety. I did the work very neatly that night in my alcove, grateful, before it was over, that there were only two figures in twenty-one. The next day Viola followed my example. I knew she would. There was no escaping from Viola. Tony cut seventy-seven, Ella Holrook's number, upon her arm. Annie Churchill and Lilly heroically cut a hundred and fifty on theirs. The fashion had been set. In three days half the Second Cours bore upon their suffering little bodies these gory evidences of their love. And for four days no one in authority knew. Yet we spent our time delightfully in examining one another's numerals, and freshening up our own. Like young savages, we incited one another to painful rites, and to bloody excesses. That Viola's hand and mine should for so long have escaped detection seems miraculous; but Madame Dane, though keenly observant, was a trifle near-sighted. She may have thought the scratches accidental. On the fifth morning, as I came out from Mass, Madame Rayburn's eye lighted by chance upon the marks. She was not near-sighted, and she never mistook one thing for another. A single glance told her the story. A single instant decided her course of action. "Agnes," she said, and I stepped from the ranks, and stood by her side. I knew what she had seen; but I did not know what she proposed doing, and my heart beat uneasily. We waited until the First Cours filed out of the chapel. Last, because tallest, came Ella Holrook and Julia Reynolds. "Julia," said Madame Rayburn, and she, too, left the ranks and joined us. No word was spoken until the long line of girls--burning with futile curiosity, but too well trained even to turn their heads--had passed through the corridor. Then Madame Rayburn took my hand in her firm grasp and held it up to view. "Look at this, Julia," she said. I had supposed it impossible to move Julia Reynolds to wrath, to arouse in her any other sentiment than the cold contempt, "la fierté honorable et digne," which she cultivated with so much care. But I had not calculated on this last straw of provocation following upon all she had previously endured. When she saw her number on my hand, she crimsoned, and her eyes grew dark. She was simply and unaffectedly angry,--what we in unguarded conversation called "mad."