he sat down and half-closed her eyes, and saw a
picture from the gallery of her memory.

It was the big classroom at Salston Hill School. At one end of the room
Myra Larose took the elementary class in drawing. At the other end, much
older girls took the lesson in advanced drawing from a master who was,
as the prospectus stated, an exhibitor at the Royal Academy. His name
was Hilary Davenant, and in the bills he was charged extra. The older
girls were ten in number, and were provided with easels, charcoal, and
stumps. They formed the circumference of a circle of which the centre
was a life-size cast with a blackboard adjacent.

Myra watched as she saw Davenant going from one drawing-board to
another, and noted the waning of patience and the growth of irritation.
He went to the blackboard and addressed the entire class on the anatomy
of the hand, illustrating his remarks by rapid drawings on the
blackboard. They were admirable drawings in their way--swift, right,
certain, slick. And suddenly he flung the chalk to the floor and spake
with his tongue. He also used gesture--a foreign and reprehensible
practice.

"You poor, silly idiots! Not one of you will ever do it, except perhaps
Miss Stenson. And if you did, it wouldn't be the real thing." He checked
himself, and went on in a nice, suave schoolmaster's voice. "I was
joking, of course. As I said, this cast presents considerable
difficulties to some of you. But you must face your difficulties and
overcome them. You must not let yourselves be discouraged." And so on.

Dora Stenson, aged sixteen, blushed and put her hand over her eyes. The
other pupils smiled in a weak, wan way. They had been told that it was a
joke, and they believed everything they were told, and did their best.
At the other end of the room Myra Larose developed a good deal of
interest in Hilary Davenant.

An incident which occurred two days later formed another picture in the
memory-gallery. Myra, with other assistants, had been summoned with
every circumstance of solemnity to the principal's private study.

"I have to inform you, ladies," said Mrs Dewlop, "that owing to
circumstances which have come to my knowledge, I have been compelled to
dismiss Mr H. Davenant at a moment's notice." She readjusted her
pince-nez, and her refined face squirmed. "Mr Davenant is not a man: he
is a satyr. I have sufficiently indicated the nature of his offence,
which he admitted; and I do not care to dwell upon the