SUPERSEDED BY MAY SINCLAIR _Author of "The Divine Fire"_ 1906 PUBLISHERS' NOTE Miss Sinclair has expressed a desire to have this book republished in America, because she considers it the best of her work previous to "The Divine Fire." It originally appeared with another work in a volume entitled "Two Sides of a Question," a small imported edition of which is now exhausted. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. PROLOGUE.--MISS QUINCEY STOPS THE WAY II. HOUSEHOLD GODS III. INAUGURAL ADDRESSES IV. BASTIAN CAUTLEY, M.D. V. HEALERS AND REGENERATORS VI. SPRING FASHIONS VII. UNDER A BLUE MOON VIII. A PAINFUL MISUNDERSTANDING IX. THROUGH THE STETHOSCOPE X. MISS QUINCEY STANDS BACK XI. DR. CAUTLEY SENDS IN HIS BILL XII. EPILOGUE.--THE MAN AND THE WOMAN SUPERSEDED CHAPTER I Prologue.--Miss Quincey Stops the Way "Stand back, Miss Quincey, if you please." The school was filing out along the main corridor of St. Sidwell's. It came with a tramp and a rustle and a hiss and a tramp, urged to a trot by the excited teachers. The First Division first, half-woman, carrying itself smoothly, with a swish of its long skirts, with a blush, a dreamy intellectual smile, or a steadfast impenetrable air, as it happened to be more or less conscious of the presence of the Head. Then the Second Division, light-hearted, irrepressible, making a noise with its feet, loose hair flapping, pig-tails flopping to the beat of its march. Then the straggling, diminishing lines of the Third, a froth of white pinafores, a confusion of legs, black or tan, staggering, shifting, shuffling in a frantic effort to keep time. On it came in a waving stream; a stream that flickered with innumerable eyes, a stream that rippled with the wind of its own flowing, that flushed and paled and brightened as some flower-face was tossed upwards, or some crest, flame-coloured or golden, flung back the light. A stream that was one in its rhythm and in the sex that was its soul, obscurely or luminously feminine; it might have been a single living thing that throbbed and undulated, as girl after girl gave out the radiance and pulsation of her youth. The effect was overpowering; your senses judged St. Sidwell's by these brilliant types that gave life and colour to the stream. The rest were nowhere.