ne on
Fridays.... No one else's father went with a party of scientific men
"for the advancement of science" to Norway or America, seeing the Falls
and the Yosemite Valley. No one else took his children as far as Dawli
travelling all day, from eight until seven... no esplanade, the old
stone jetty and coves and cowrie shells....

CHAPTER III

1

Miriam was practising on the piano in the larger of the two English
bedrooms. Two other pianos were sounding in the house, one across the
landing and the other in the saal where Herr Kapellmeister Bossenberger
was giving a music-lesson. The rest of the girls were gathered in
the large schoolroom under the care of Mademoiselle for Saturday's
_raccommodage_. It was the last hour of the week's work. Presently there
would be a great gonging, the pianos would cease, Fraulein's voice would
sound up through the house "Anziehen zum Aus-geh-hen!"

There would be the walk, dinner, the Saturday afternoon home-letters to
be written and then, until Monday, holiday, freedom to read and to talk
English and idle. And there was a new arrival in the house. Ulrica Hesse
had come. Miriam had seen her. There had been three large leather trunks
in the hall and a girl with a smooth pure oval of pale face standing
wrapped in dark furs, gazing about her with eyes for which Miriam had no
word, liquid--limpid--great-saucers, no--pools... great round deeps....
She had felt about for something to express them as she went upstairs
with her roll of music. Fraulein Pfaff who had seemed to hover and smile
about the girl as if half afraid to speak to her, had put out a hand for
Miriam and said almost deprecatingly, "Ach, mm, dies' ist unser Ulrica."

The girl's thin fingers had come out of her furs and fastened
convulsively--like cold, throbbing claws on to the breadth of Miriam's
hand.

"Unsere englische Lehrerin--our teacher from England," smiled Fraulein.

"Lehrerin!" breathed the girl. Something flinched behind her great
eyes. The fingers relaxed, and Miriam feeling within her a beginning of
response, had gone upstairs.

As she reached the upper landing she began to distinguish against the
clangour of chromatic passages assailing the house from the echoing
saal, the gentle tones of the nearer piano, the one in the larger German
bedroom opposite the front room for which she was bound. She paused for
a moment at the top of the stairs and listened. A little swaying melody
came out to her, m