and gravely.

She felt easy and happy in this communion. Dimly she was conscious that
it sustained her, it gave her dignity and poise. She thought that its
meaning must, if she observed it at all, be quite obvious to Fraulein
and must reveal her to her. Presently her eyes were drawn to meet
Fraulein's and she read there a disgust and a loathing such as she
had never seen. The woods receded, the beauty dropped out of them. The
crunching of the wheels sounded out suddenly. What was the good of the
brake-load of grimacing people? Miriam wanted to stop it and get out and
stroll home along the edge of the wood with the quiet man.

"Haben die Damen veilleicht ein Rad verloren?"

A deep voice on the steps of the brake.... "Have the ladies lost a
wheel, perhaps?" Miriam translated helplessly to herself during a
general outbreak of laughter....

In a moment a brake overtook them and drove alongside in the twilight.
The drivers whipped up their horses. The two vehicles raced and rumbled
along keeping close together. Fraulein called to their driver to desist.
The students slackened down too and began singing at random, one against
the other; those on the near side standing up and bowing and laughing. A
bouquet of fern fronds came in over Judy's head, missing the awning
and falling against Clara's knees. She rose and flung it back and then
everyone seemed to be standing up and laughing and throwing.

They drove home, slowly, side by side, shouting and singing and
throwing. Warm, blinding masses of fragrant grass came from the
students' brake and were thrown to and fro through the darkness lit by
the lamps of the two carriages.

CHAPTER X

1

Towards the end of June there were frequent excursions.

Into all the gatherings at Waldstrasse the outside world came like a
presence. It removed the sense of pressure, of being confronted and
challenged. Everything that was said seemed to be incidental to it, like
remarks dropped in a low tone between individuals at a great conference.

Miriam wondered again and again whether her companions shared this sense
with her. Sometimes when they were all sitting together she longed to
ask, to find out, to get some public acknowledgment of the magic that
lay over everything. At times it seemed as if could they all be still
for a moment--it must take shape. It was everywhere, in the food, in the
fragrance rising from the opened lid of the tea-urn, in all the needful
unquestione