Louise reflected. "All the afternoons, I think. And three evenings when I go to lectures. And, of course, gallery days, when I make up in the evenings." "And homework?" "Oh, there's heaps of time at night always." Clare smiled upon her class. "Well, Lower Fifth--what do you think of it?" The class opened its mouth. "Louise is moved up four forms. She's thirteen. She's top of the class and first in to-day's results. You hear what her extra work is. And she finds time to learn _Childe Roland_--optional. What do you think of it?" Agatha bit down her envy. "It's pretty good," she said. Clare's glance approved her. "Yes. So I think. It's so good that I'm more than pleased. I'm--impressed. Rather proud of my youngest pupil. For next time you will learn----" And with one of her quick transitions, she began to dictate her homework. The gong clanged as she finished. Alwynne's voice was heard in the passage, inquiring for Miss Hartill, and Clare hurried out. Followed a confused banging of books and desk-lids, a tangle of fragmentary remarks, and much trampling of boots on uncarpeted boards, as one after another followed her. Within five minutes the room was bare, save for Clare's forgotten satchel at the upper end of the big table, and Louise, motionless in her chair at the foot. CHAPTER VI Louise was tasting happiness. Happiness was a new and absorbing experience to Louise. The only child of a former marriage, she had grown up among boisterous half-brothers with whom she had little fellowship. Her father, a driving, thriving merchant, was prouder of his second brood of apple-cheeked youngsters than of his first-born, who fitted into the scheme of life as ill as her mother had done. He had imagined himself in love with his first wife, had married her, piqued by her elusive ways, charmed by her pale, wood-sorrel beauty; and she, shy and unawakened, had taken his six feet of bone and muscle for outward and visible sign of the matured spiritual strength her nature needed. The disappointment was mutual as swift; it had taken no longer than the honeymoon to convince the one that he had burdened himself with a phantast, the other that she was tied to a philistine. For a year they shared bed and board, severed and inseparable as earth and moon; then the wife having passed on to a daughter the heritage of a nature rare and impracticable as a sensitive plant, died and was forgotten.