'So vestiges of paganism really do linger. That is extremely striking.' Tommy, pluming himself, happened to look across and meet Miss Varley's eyes fastened consideringly upon him. He returned the regard with his melancholy gaze. 'Not only Pan, either--Venus, Jupiter, Mars----' 'Don't!' Miranda interrupted. 'You're going on just like my astronomy mistress. She was a beast. I hated her. And I hate stars. And you do talk rot, you two. You both tell the most awful----' But Tommy was looking at Miss Varley with his sad regard from under quick black brows. She turned to her aunt and started a new subject. Tommy remarked to her as he said good-bye: 'I'm sorry you thought I was so rude.' She looked at him for a moment. 'I shouldn't have thought you were particularly sorry, you know. Good-bye.' The leisurely considering tone, that quite lacked interest, seemed to add an edge to the words. Tommy, going home with Betty, observed: 'I'm not going to be striking any more. Miss Varley looks at me, and it makes me so shy, and when one's shy one isn't convincing.... I suppose it's really rather a rotten game, you know.' Betty admitted that it might be so. So that renunciation was made, and their relation with Mrs. Venables became less amusing to themselves and, presumably, less edifying to her. It was quite wearying having to be so comparatively literal. The Crevequers wondered if Miss Varley appreciated the sacrifice. Betty did not imagine her likely to notice it; she was a person of abstraction. She took an interest, it seemed, in nothing but her work. To be in her presence--in her studio, for instance--was a little like being in the cold, rarefied atmosphere of a mountain-top. It was curious, always, to plunge suddenly into it. To get back afterwards into the warm valleys was also rather curious. Her conversation, when she had any, was a little obvious in its conventionality. It seemed to Betty, when she looked at her, surprising that this should be so. She was pleasant to look at, slim and tall, with head poised a little high, a little backwards; her short upper lip was caught up a little from her lower, seeming to carry out the character of the round, lifted chin and backward-poised head. Over her far-seeing grey eyes her fair brows often puckered thoughtfully, as if they strove to discern. The winter sunshine, striking in through the window, made of her light hair a fluffy aureole. There was, perhaps, a Puritan touch somewhere about her, emphasized by the simple lines of her green painting-smock. There was also something remote, inaccessible. Her grey eyes, dwelling on Betty, were artist's eyes; they seemed to take in every line, carefully noting, and to give out nothing. There was in their regard a certain quality of reserve, an implication of something held back.