He walked very softly down the passage, his head lowered, his hands behind his back. He stopped outside Traill's bedroom door and listened again—he was surprised to hear that his heart was beating very loudly indeed. He pushed the door open and looked inside. The bed was near the window—the sun flooded the room and shone on the silver hair-brushes and the china basin and jug. It was a very simple room, and the bed took up most of it; there was one photograph. He went very softly up to it and saw that it was a photograph of Miss Desart—Miss Desart, smiling, out of doors with the sun on her dress. He bent towards the photograph, over the china basin, and kissed it. Then he went out, closing the door softly behind him. III. And the week wore away, and Monday came round. Thursday was Speech-Day, and on Friday everybody went home; all marks and form lists had to be in the headmaster's room on Wednesday night before nine. Perrin, on Monday evening, was vaguely conscious that he had corrected no papers at all. They lay about his room now in stacks—none of them were corrected. Some masters posted results as they corrected the papers; other masters left all the results until the end. It was not considered strange that Perrin had posted no results. But he knew as he looked at these white sheets that he ought to have done something with them. He stood in the middle of the room with his hands to his head and wondered what he ought to have done. Why, of course, he ought to correct them—he ought to say what was good and what was bad. He took up a large pile of them, and they almost slipped from his fingers because there were so many. He found that it was a paper on French Grammar. He looked at the slip with the questions. “I. Give the preterite (singular only) and past participle of donner, recevoir, laisser, s'asseoir...” Ah! s'asseoir was a hard one—he had always found that that was difficult. He turned over the page: J'eu, tu eus, il eut—that looked wrong.. . Again, here was Simpson Minor—“Je fus, tu fus, il fut”—surely that was confused in some way. The papers at the bottom slipped: he bent to prevent them falling, and all of them tipped over. They rose in a cloud about him, a white cloud, flying into the air, sailing to the other end of the room, diving under the table and into the fireplace, and a great white pile lay-scattered wildly on the floor. The silly papers stared at him: “Je dors tous...” “Il faut que...” “I used to love my mother, but now I love my aunt...” “Rule for the conjunctive and disjunctive pronouns...” And then, Simpson Minor: “Je fus, tu fus...” He was infuriated with their silly, stupid faces. They lay there on the floor, staring up at him and making no attempt whatever to move. He was maddened by their impassivity. He began to stamp on them, and then to trample on them—he rushed about the room, uttering little cries and wildly stamping... .