na's successor newly
arrived cleaning the neglected front doorstep. Her lean yellow face
looked a vacant response to Miriam's enquiry for Fraulein Pfaff.

"Ist Fraulein zu Hause," she repeated. The girl shook her head vaguely.

How quiet the house seemed. The girls, after a morning spent in turning
out the kitchen for the reception of the new _magd_ were out for a long
ramble, including _Schocolade mit Schlagsahne_ until tea-time.

The empty house spread round her and towered above her as she took off
her things in the basement and the schoolroom yawned bright and empty
as she reached the upper hall. She hesitated by the door. There was no
sound anywhere.... She would play... on the saal piano.

"I'm not a Lehrerin--I'm not--I'm--not," she hummed as she collected
her music... she would bring her songs too.... "I'm going to
Pom--pom--pom--Pom-erain--eeya."

22

"Pom--erain--eeya," she hummed, swinging herself round the great door
into the saal. Pastor Lahmann was standing near one of the windows. The
rush of her entry carried her to the middle of the room and he met her
there smiling quietly. She stared easily and comfortably up into his
great mild eyes, went into them as they remained quietly and gently
there, receiving her. Presently he said in a soft low tone, "You are
vairy happy, mademoiselle."

Miriam moved her eyes from his face and gazed out of the window into the
little sunlit summer-house. The sense of the outline of his shoulders
and his comforting black mannishness so near to her brought her almost
to tears. Fiercely she fixed the sunlit summer-house, "Oh, I'm _not,_"
she said.

"Not? Is it possible?"

"I think life is perfectly appalling."

She moved awkwardly to a little chiffonier and put down her music on its
marble top.

He came safely following her and stood near again.

"You do not like the life of the school?"

"Oh, I don't know."

"You are from the country, mademoiselle."

Miriam fumbled with her music.... Was she?

"One sees that at once. You come from the land."

Miriam glanced at his solid white profile as he stood with hands
clasped, near her music, on the chiffonier. She noticed again that
strange flatness of the lower part of the face.

"I, too, am from the land. I grew up on a farm. I love the land and
think to return to it--to have my little strip when I am free--when my
boys have done their schooling. I shall go back."

He turned towards her and Miriam smiled i