a
clergyman who was also a friend; for a congregation of people who knew
her, and cared for her well-being, instead of the long rows of strange
faces. She remembered how Cecil had declared that in London a girl
might attend the same church for years on end, and never hear a word of
welcome, and hope died low in her breast. The moment of exaltation had
passed, and she told herself drearily that on Christmas afternoon she
must take a book and sit by the fire in the waiting-room of some great
station, dine at a restaurant, and perhaps go to a concert at night.

For weeks past Claire had been intending to go to a West End church to
hear one of the finest of modern preachers. She decided to go this
morning, since the length of journey now seemed rather an advantage than
a drawback, as helping to fill up another of the long, dragging hours.

She dressed herself with the care and nicety which was the result of her
French training, and which had of late become almost a religious duty,
for the study of the fifteen women who daily assembled round the table
in the Staff-Room was as a danger signal to warn new-comers of the
perils ahead. With the one exception of Sophie Blake, not one of the
number seemed to make any effort to preserve their feminine charm. They
dressed their hair in the quickest and easiest fashion without
considering the question of appearance; they wore dun-coloured garments
with collars of the same material; though severely neat, all their
skirts seemed to suffer from the same depressing tendency to drop at the
back; their bony wrists emerged from tightly-buttoned sleeves. The
point of view adopted was that appearance did not matter, that it was
waste of time to consider the adornment of the outer woman. Brain was
the all-important factor; every possible moment must be devoted to the
cultivation of brain; but an outsider could not fail to note that, with
this destroying of a natural instinct, something which went deeper than
the surface was also lost; with the grace of the body certain feminine
graces of soul died also, and the world was poorer for their loss.

The untidy servant maid peered out of the window to watch Claire as she
left the house that morning, and evolved a whole feuilleton to account
for the inconsistency of her appearance with her position as a first
floor front. "You'd take her for a lady to look at her! P'raps she
_is_ a lady in disguise!" and from, this point the making of the