She handled her statements as she had handled the pile of green material, pouncing, taking disdainful hold. Her sentences were sallies, each one leaving her voice halted on an interval of deprecating sounds. Her voice came from a height. She must be standing, poised, in her light way, for movement. Talking as if to herself, assuming a lack of interest. Yet the air was full of her shy desire for response. “They must be holy terrors.” “I fear,” chuckled Miss Holland, “that I am not completely convinced of their holiness.” “I’ve never met any of these women. Avoid women on the whole. But I daresay I should be that type myself if I weren’t too lazy to achieve a position.” “Believe me, you could never be official. You are much too artistic.” Miriam was too disappointed to feel flattered. There was no illumination here. Exposing herself before the tribunal, she had been judged in a class of which the judge knew nothing. Compared to Miss Holland, she might perhaps be called artistic. But it was grievous to be supplied already with a false reputation. To be imagined as cultured in a way that was respected in vicarages. She glanced around upon the poor things that already she loved with an immemorial love whose secret eluded her, whose going forth she knew to be blind and personal. Her eye was at once arrested by a small dark something upon the white coverlet of her bed. A ladybird. Too square. Perfectly square and motionless. Even as she called to Miss Holland to come through and observe, the sight of it thrilled her in every nerve. A swish of the curtain and Miss Holland was at her side, bent and peering. “Dear, dear, _dear_!” she moaned. “I feared, I _feared_. I’ll get the dustpan.” The floor rocked with her swift departure. Miriam stood fascinated. The unspeakable thing had revealed itself, and she was not only calm but curious. A moment ago it had existed only in her mind, an ultimate she could not imagine herself seeing and surviving. It looked like a fragment of an autumn leaf. Miss Holland’s voice sounded in the further room. Miriam listened to the low tones for entertainment while she kept watch. “I feared, I feared,” and then a swift ferretting, drowning the anxious monologue. Weary of the scene that was holding up her installation, she turned away to the window, half expecting to be leapt upon from behind. She was vitalised by the incident; tingling from head to foot. It was strange that one could recognise at sight an unknown thing; but far stranger that within a moment of pure shock there should be life, the keen sense of living that stood away outside the bounds of everyday life. What a set of circumstances were these that brought only vermin to give her the pang of immortality. Not a thing one could testify at a dinner-table. Why not?