knot."

"What do you mean?"

"You're going to read--Gerty, or something--no idiots admitted. You're
going it, Hendy. Ta-ta. Fly! Don't stick in the mud, old slowcoach."

"I'll come in a second," said Miriam, adjusting hairpins.

She was to read Goethe... with Fraulein Pfaff.... Fraulein knew she
would be one of the few who would do for a Goethe reading. She reached
the little room smiling with happiness.

"Here she is," was Fraulein's greeting. The little group--Ulrica, Minna
and Solomon Martin were sitting about informally in the sunlit window
space, Minna and Solomon had needlework--Ulrica was gazing out into the
garden. Miriam sank into the remaining low-seated wicker chair and
gave herself up. Fraulein began to read, as she did at prayers, slowly,
almost below her breath, but so clearly that Miriam could distinguish
each word and her face shone as she bent over her book. It was a poem
in blank verse with long undulating lines. Miriam paid no heed to the
sense. She heard nothing but the even swing, the slight rising and
falling of the clear low tones. She felt once more the opening of the
schoolroom window--she saw the little brown summer-house and the sun
shining on the woodwork of its porch. Summer coming. Summer coming in
Germany. She drew a long breath. The poem was telling of someone getting
away out of a room, out of "narrow conversation" to a meadow-covered
plain--of a white pathway winding through the green.

Minna put down her sewing and turned her kind blue eyes to Fraulein
Pfaff's face.

Ulrica sat drooping, her head bent, her great eyes veiled, her hands
entwined on her lap.... The little pathway led to a wood. The wide
landscape disappeared. Fraulein's voice ceased.

3

She handed the book to Ulrica, indicating the place and Ulrica read. Her
voice sounded a higher pitch than Fraulein's. It sounded out rich and
full and liquid, and seemed to shake her slight body and echo against
the walls of her face. It filled the room with a despairing ululation.
Fraulein seemed by contrast to have been whispering piously in a corner.

Listening to the beseeching tones, hearing no words, Miriam wished that
the eyes could be raised, when the reading ceased, to hers and that she
could go and put her hands about the beautiful head, scarcely touching
it and say, "It is all right. I will stay with you always."

She watched the little hand that was not engaged with the book and lay
abandoned, outstretche