k, work.

And till college, she must go on with this teaching in St.
Philip's School, which was always destroying her, but which she
could now manage, without spoiling all her life. She would
submit to it for a time, since the time had a definite
limit.

The class-teaching itself at last became almost mechanical.
It was a strain on her, an exhausting wearying strain, always
unnatural. But there was a certain amount of pleasure in the
sheer oblivion of teaching, so much work to do, so many children
to see after, so much to be done, that one's self was forgotten.
When the work had become like habit to her, and her individual
soul was left out, had its growth elsewhere, then she could be
almost happy.

Her real, individual self drew together and became more
coherent during these two years of teaching, during the struggle
against the odds of class teaching. It was always a prison to
her, the school. But it was a prison where her wild, chaotic
soul became hard and independent. When she was well enough and
not tired, then she did not hate the teaching. She enjoyed
getting into the swing of work of a morning, putting forth all
her strength, making the thing go. It was for her a strenuous
form of exercise. And her soul was left to rest, it had the time
of torpor in which to gather itself together in strength again.
But the teaching hours were too long, the tasks too heavy, and
the disciplinary condition of the school too unnatural for her.
She was worn very thin and quivering.

She came to school in the morning seeing the hawthorn flowers
wet, the little, rosy grains swimming in a bowl of dew. The
larks quivered their song up into the new sunshine, and the
country was so glad. It was a violation to plunge into the dust
and greyness of the town.

So that she stood before her class unwilling to give herself
up to the activity of teaching, to turn her energy, that longed
for the country and for joy of early summer, into the dominating
of fifty children and the transferring to them some morsels of
arithmetic. There was a little absentness about her. She could
not force herself into forgetfulness. A jar of buttercups and
fool's-parsley in the window-bottom kept her away in the
meadows, where in the lush grass the moon-daisies were
half-submerged, and a spray of pink ragged robin. Yet before her
were faces of fifty children. They were almost like big daisies
in a dimness of the grass.

A brightness was on her face, a litt