h a twisted glove-finger tip just under the book
ledge with her left hand, towards Miriam. But sung as these Germans sang
it, it did not jerk at all. It did not sound like a "proclamation" or an
order. It was... somehow... everyday. The notes seemed to hold her up.
This was--Luther--Germany--the Reformation--solid and quiet. She glanced
up and then hung more closely over her book. It was the stained-glass
windows that made the Schloss Kirche so dark. One movement of her head
showed her that all the windows within sight were dark with rich colour,
and there was oak everywhere--great shelves and galleries and juttings
of dark wood, great carved masses and a high dim roof, and strange
spaces of light; twilight, and light like moonlight and people, not
many people, a troop, a little army under the high roof, with the great
shadows all about them. "Nun danket alle Gott." There was nothing
to object to in that. Everybody could say that. Everybody--Fraulein,
Gertrude, all these little figures in the church, the whole world. "Now
thank, all, God!"... Emma and Marie were chanting on either side of her.
Immediately behind her sounded the quavering voice of an old woman. They
all felt it. She must remember that.... Think of it every day.

CHAPTER V

1

During those early days Miriam realised that school-routine, as she knew
it--the planned days--the regular unvarying succession of lessons and
preparations, had no place in this new world. Even the masters' lessons,
coming in from outside and making a kind of framework of appointments
over the otherwise fortuitously occupied days, were, she soon found,
not always securely calculable. Herr Kapellmeister Bossenberger would
be heard booming and intoning in the hall unexpectedly at all hours. He
could be heard all over the house. Miriam had never seen him, but she
noticed that great haste was always made to get a pupil to the saal and
that he taught impatiently. He shouted and corrected and mimicked. Only
Millie's singing, apparently, he left untouched. You could hear her
lilting away through her little high songs as serenely as she did at
Vorspielen.

Miriam was at once sure that he found his task of teaching these girls
an extremely tiresome one.

Probably most teachers found teaching tiresome. But there was something
peculiar and new to her in Herr Bossenberger's attitude. She tried to
account for it... German men despised women. Why did they teach them
anything at