d quiet and alone across the mellow face
of a neighbouring stone porch--had suddenly been glad that she was alone
and had wondered why that shadowed porch-peak was more beautiful than
all the summer things she knew and felt at that moment that nothing
could touch or trouble her again.

She could not find anything of that feeling in the early day outside
Hanover. She was hemmed in, and the fields were so sad she could not
bear to look at them. The sun had disappeared since they came out. The
sky was grey and low and it seemed warmer already than it had been
in the midday sun during the last few days. One of the girls on ahead
hummed the refrain of a student-song:--

"In der Ecke steht er Seinen Schnurbart dreht er Siehst du wohl, da
steht er schon Der versoff'ne Schwiegersohn."

Miriam felt very near the end of endurance.

Elsa Speier who was just behind her, became her inevitable companion
when they reached the roadway. A farmhouse appeared about a quarter of a
mile away.

Miriam's sense of her duties closed in on her. Trying not to see Elsa's
elaborate clothes and the profile in which she could find no meaning, no
hope, no rest, she spoke to her.

"Do you like milk, Elsa?" she said cheerfully.

Elsa began swinging her lace-covered parasol.

"If I like milk?" she repeated presently, and flashed mocking eyes in
Miriam's direction.

Despair touched Miriam's heart.

"Some people don't," she said.

Elsa hummed and swung her parasol.

"Why should I like milk?" she stated.

The muddy farmyard, lying back from the roadway and below it, was steamy
and choking with odours. Miriam who had imagined a cool dairy and cold
milk frothing in pans, felt a loathing as warmth came to her fingers
from the glass she held. Most of the girls were busily sipping. She
raised her glass once towards her lips, snuffed a warm reek, and turned
away towards the edge of the group, to pour out the contents of her
glass, unseen, upon the filth-sodden earth.

2

Passing languidly up through the house after breakfast, unable to
decide to spend her Saturday morning as usual at a piano in one of
the bedrooms, Miriam went, wondering in response to a quiet call from
Fraulein Pfaff into the large room shared by the Bergmanns and Ulrica
Hesse. Explaining that Clara was now to take possession of the half of
Elsa Speier's room that had been left empty by Minna--"poor Minna now
with her good parents seeking health in the Swiss mountains,