n; knowing it their business to 'strike,' they did
their best to do so, laying on effects sometimes a little over lurid.
They instituted competitions as to which of them could call forth most
often during an interview the comment 'very striking.' Tommy usually
won, because, as Betty complained, Mrs. Venables was more easily struck
by boys than by girls. It was Tommy who appropriated Betty's idea of the
worship of Pan that lingered in country districts about Naples.

'That's why goats are so common, all about the streets--don't you
know?'

He turned to Miranda, who nodded.

'I know. Beasts. I hate them.'

Mrs. Venables was stirred.

'So vestiges of paganism really do linger. That is extremely striking.'

Tommy, pluming himself, happened to look across and meet Miss Varley's
eyes fastened consideringly upon him. He returned the regard with his
melancholy gaze.

'Not only Pan, either--Venus, Jupiter, Mars----'

'Don't!' Miranda interrupted. 'You're going on just like my astronomy
mistress. She was a beast. I hated her. And I hate stars. And you do
talk rot, you two. You both tell the most awful----'

But Tommy was looking at Miss Varley with his sad regard from under
quick black brows.

She turned to her aunt and started a new subject.

Tommy remarked to her as he said good-bye:

'I'm sorry you thought I was so rude.'

She looked at him for a moment.

'I shouldn't have thought you were particularly sorry, you know.
Good-bye.'

The leisurely considering tone, that quite lacked interest, seemed to
add an edge to the words.

Tommy, going home with Betty, observed:

'I'm not going to be striking any more. Miss Varley looks at me, and it
makes me so shy, and when one's shy one isn't convincing.... I suppose
it's really rather a rotten game, you know.'

Betty admitted that it might be so. So that renunciation was made, and
their relation with Mrs. Venables became less amusing to themselves and,
presumably, less edifying to her. It was quite wearying having to be so
comparatively literal.

The Crevequers wondered if Miss Varley appreciated the sacrifice. Betty
did not imagine her likely to notice it; she was a person of
abstraction. She took an interest, it seemed, in nothing but her work.
To be in her presence--in her studio, for instance--was a little like
being in the cold, rarefied atmosphere of a mountain-top. It was
curious, always, to plunge suddenly into it. To get back afterwards into
the warm v