ned, my
thoughts were carried off captive.

The classes formed another building; the hall parted them from the
dwelling-house: despite distance and partition, I heard the sudden stir
of numbers, a whole division rising at once.

"They are putting away work," said Madame.

It was indeed the hour to put away work, but why that sudden hush--that
instant quell of the tumult?

"Wait, Madame--I will see what it is."

And I put down my pen and left her. Left her? No: she would not be
left: powerless to detain me, she rose and followed, close as my
shadow. I turned on the last step of the stair.

"Are you coming, too?" I asked.

"Yes," said she; meeting my glance with a peculiar aspect--a look,
clouded, yet resolute.

We proceeded then, not together, but she walked in my steps.

He was come. Entering the first classe, I saw him. There, once more
appeared the form most familiar. I doubt not they had tried to keep him
away, but he was come.

The girls stood in a semicircle; he was passing round, giving his
farewells, pressing each hand, touching with his lips each cheek. This
last ceremony, foreign custom permitted at such a parting--so solemn,
to last so long.

I felt it hard that Madame Beck should dog me thus; following and
watching me close; my neck and shoulder shrunk in fever under her
breath; I became terribly goaded.

He was approaching; the semicircle was almost travelled round; he came
to the last pupil; he turned. But Madame was before me; she had stepped
out suddenly; she seemed to magnify her proportions and amplify her
drapery; she eclipsed me; I was hid. She knew my weakness and
deficiency; she could calculate the degree of moral paralysis--the
total default of self-assertion--with which, in a crisis, I could be
struck. She hastened to her kinsman, she broke upon him volubly, she
mastered his attention, she hurried him to the door--the glass-door
opening on the garden. I think he looked round; could I but have caught
his eye, courage, I think, would have rushed in to aid feeling, and
there would have been a charge, and, perhaps, a rescue; but already the
room was all confusion, the semicircle broken into groups, my figure
was lost among thirty more conspicuous. Madame had her will; yes, she
got him away, and he had not seen me; he thought me absent. Five
o'clock struck, the loud dismissal-bell rang, the school separated, the
room emptied.

There seems, to my memory, an entire darkness and distract