4

After tea the great doors were thrown open and the girls filed into the
saal. It was a large high room furnished like a drawing-room--enough
settees and easy chairs to accommodate more than all the girls. The
polished floor was uncarpeted save for an archipelago of mats and rugs
in the wide circle of light thrown by the four-armed chandelier. A grand
piano was pushed against the wall in the far corner of the room, between
the farthest of the three high French windows and the shining pillar of
porcelain stove.

5

The high room, the bright light, the plentiful mirrors, the long sweep
of lace curtains, the many faces--the girls seemed so much more numerous
scattered here than they had when collected in the schoolroom--brought
Miriam the sense of the misery of social occasions. She wondered whether
the girls were nervous. She was glad that music lessons were no part of
her remuneration. She thought of dreadful experiences of playing before
people. The very first time, at home, when she had played a duet with
Eve--Eve playing a little running melody in the treble--her own part a
page of minims. The minims had swollen until she could not see whether
they were lines or spaces, and her fingers had been so weak after the
first unexpectedly loud note that she could hardly make any sound. Eve
had said "louder" and her fingers had suddenly stiffened and she had
worked them from her elbows like sticks at the end of her trembling
wrists and hands. Eve had noticed her dreadful movements and resented
being elbowed. She had heard nothing then but her hard loud minims till
the end, and then as she stood dizzily up someone had said she had a
nice firm touch, and she had pushed her angry way from the piano across
the hearthrug. She should always remember the clear red-hot mass of the
fire and the bottle of green Chartreuse warming on the blue and cream
tiles. There were probably only two or three guests, but the room had
seemed full of people, stupid people who had made her play. How angry
she had been with Eve for noticing her discomfiture and with the
forgotten guest for her silly remark. She knew she had simply poked
the piano. Then there had been the annual school concert, all the girls
almost unrecognisable with fear. She had learnt her pieces by heart for
those occasions and played them through with trembling limbs and burning
eyes--alternately thumping with stiff fingers and feeling her whole hand
faint from the wrist