The examination had taken place early in May, but the summer term was nearly over before news of the results arrived. When it came, it made but a small sensation. The school had tired of waiting. Not only was its own more intimate examination drawing near, but its many heads were filled, to the exclusion of all else, with the excitements and rivalries of the summer theatricals. The school play was an institution. Of late years--ever since she had joined the staff indeed--it had grown into an annual personal triumph for Miss Hartill. Clare was blessed--cursed--with that sixth sense, the _sens du théâtre_. Her own nature was, in essence, theatrical; her frigid and fastidious reserve warring incessantly with her irrepressible love of the scene for its own sake. She was aware of the trait and humiliated by its presence in her character. Usually she would curb her inclination with a severity that was in itself histrionic: at times she indulged it with voluptuous recklessness. As a girl, the stage had appealed to her strongly; but her excessive squeamishness, with her acute sense of personal, bodily dignity, closed it to her as a career. Also her love of power. Though she knew little of stage life she had sufficient intuition to gauge correctly what she might become. Successful necessarily--dominant never. And she required a dais. But the compelling woman, she knew, is successful through her combination of intellectual strength with sexual charm. She must not scruple to use all the weapons at her service. Clare had told herself that there were some weapons to which she would never condescend. If sting had lain in the fact that, though she would, they were not hers to use, she did not acknowledge it, even to herself. Resolutely she put from her the idea of fostering a useless talent; and the desire to exploit it, save surreptitiously in social intercourse, dulled as she grew older.