stole in to kiss her cheek, in the elusive fragrance
of young, green, growing things, in the drowsy, drowsy sound of Mrs.
Clifton's chickens across the way...

Precious minutes were speeding by; she would not have her Geometry
lesson. But Missy didn't bring herself back to think of that; would not
have cared, anyway. She let her soul stretch out, out, out.

Such is the sweet, subtle, compelling madness a day of Spring can bring
one.

Missy had often felt the ecstasy of being swept out on the yearning
demand for a new experience. Generally because of something suggestive
in "reading" or in heavenly colour combinations or in sad music at
twilight; but, now, for no definable reason at all, she felt her soul
welling up and up in vague but poignant craving. She asked permission to
get a drink of water. But instead of quenching her thirst, she wandered
to the entry of the room occupied by Mathematics III A--Missy's own
class, from which she was now sequestered by the cruel bar termed
"failure-to-pass." Something was afoot in there; Missy put her ear to
the keyhole; then she boldly opened the door.

A tempest of paper-wads, badinage and giggles greeted her. The teacher's
desk was vacant. Miss Smith was at home sick, and the principal had
put Mathematics III A on their honour. For a time Missy joined in their
honourable pursuit of giggles and badinage. But Raymond had welcomed her
as if the fun must mount to something yet higher when she came; she felt
a "secret, deep, interior urge" to show what she could do. The seductive
May air stole into her blood, a stealthy, intoxicating elixir, and
finally the Inspiration came, with such tumultuous swiftness that she
could never have told whence or how. Passed on to her fellows, it was
caught up with an ardour equally mad and unreckoning. One minute the
unpastored flock of Mathematics III A were leaning out the windows,
sniffing in the lilac scents wafted over from Mrs. Clifton's yard;
the next they were scurrying, tip-toe, flushed, laughing, jostling,
breathless, out through the cloak-room, down the stairs, through the
side-door, across the stretch of school-yard, toward a haven beyond Mrs.
Clifton's lilac hedge.

Where were they going? They did not know. Why had they started? They did
not know. What the next step? They did not know. No thought nor reason
in that, onward rush; only one vast, enveloping, incoherent, tumultuous
impulse--away! away! Away from dark walls into the open