e. But her will was tense against
them all the time.

All the while, they pursued her. She had never had such a
passionate love of the beautiful things about her. Sitting on
top of the tram-car, at evening, sometimes school was swept away
as she saw a magnificent sky settling down. And her breast, her
very hands, clamoured for the lovely flare of sunset. It was
poignant almost to agony, her reaching for it. She almost cried
aloud seeing the sundown so lovely.

For she was held away. It was no matter how she said to
herself that school existed no more once she had left it. It
existed. It was within her like a dark weight, controlling her
movement. It was in vain the high-spirited, proud young girl
flung off the school and its association with her. She was Miss
Brangwen, she was Standard Five teacher, she had her most
important being in her work now.

Constantly haunting her, like a darkness hovering over her
heart and threatening to swoop down over it at every moment, was
the sense that somehow, somehow she was brought down. Bitterly
she denied unto herself that she was really a schoolteacher.
Leave that to the Violet Harbys. She herself would stand clear
of the accusation. It was in vain she denied it.

Within herself some recording hand seemed to point
mechanically to a negation. She was incapable of fulfilling her
task. She could never for a moment escape from the fatal weight
of the knowledge.

And so she felt inferior to Violet Harby. Miss Harby was a
splendid teacher. She could keep order and inflict knowledge on
a class with remarkable efficiency. It was no good Ursula's
protesting to herself that she was infinitely, infinitely the
superior of Violet Harby. She knew that Violet Harby succeeded
where she failed, and this in a task which was almost a test of
her. She felt something all the time wearing upon her, wearing
her down. She went about in these first weeks trying to deny it,
to say she was free as ever. She tried not to feel at a
disadvantage before Miss Harby, tried to keep up the effect of
her own superiority. But a great weight was on her, which Violet
Harby could bear, and she herself could not.

Though she did not give in, she never succeeded. Her class
was getting in worse condition, she knew herself less and less
secure in teaching it. Ought she to withdraw and go home again?
Ought she to say she had come to the wrong place, and so retire?
Her very life was at test.

She went on doggedly