Incredibly soon, so stealthy swift is time, came this last term of Rosalie’s at the Sultana’s. Time does not play an open game. It’s of the cloak and dagger sort. It stalks and pounces. Rosalie was astonished to think she was leaving; and now the time had come she was sorry to be going. Not very sorry; very excited; but having just enough regret to realise, on looking back, that she had been very happy at school and to realise, actively, happiness in this last term. One knows what it is. It’s always like that. One always was happy; one so seldom is. Happiness to be realised needs faint perception of sadness as needs the egg the touch of salt to manifest its flavour. Flashes of entertainment may enliven the most wretched of us; but that’s pleasure; that’s not happiness. One comes to know the only true and ideal happiness is happiness tinctured with faintest, vaguest hint of tears. It is peace; and who knows peace that has not come to it through storm, or knoweth storm ahead, or in storm past hath not lost one that would have shared this peace? So that girl’s last term was (in her words) “tremendously jolly.” She was just eighteen, and she was leaving, and responsive to this the harness of the school was drawn off her as at the paddock gate the headstall from a colt. She was out of lessons. She did some teaching of the younger girls. She was on terms with the mistresses. She had the run of Keggo’s room. Such talks in Keggo’s room.... She was out from the cove of childhood; she was into the bay of youth; breasting towards the sea of womanhood (that sea that’s sailed by stars and by no chart); and she was encountering tides that come to young mariners to perplex them and Keggo could talk about such things with the experience that so enraptures young mariners and of which young mariners are at the same time so confidently contemptuous, so superiorly sceptical. Nearer to press the simile, youth at the feet of experience is as one, experienced, climbing a mountain with the young thing panting behind. “Go on! Go on!” pants the growing young thing. “This is ripping. Go on. Show the way. But I don’t want your hand. I can do it easily by myself--better.” And one evening while Rosalie stumblingly explained, and eagerly received, and sceptically doubted, “But look here, Keggo,” she cried, and stopped and blushed, abashed at her use of the nickname. Miss Keggs laughed. “Don’t mind, Rosalie. Call me Keggo. I like it. It’s much more friendly. I’m very fond of you, Rosalie.” They were by the oil stove, Miss Keggs in her wicker armchair, Rosalie on the floor, her back propped against Miss Keggs’s knees. One of Miss Keggs’s hands was on Rosalie’s shoulder and she moved it to touch the girl’s face. “Are you fond of me, Rosalie?” Rosalie turned towards her and spoke impulsively. “Oh, awfully--Keggo.”