patting and dismissing two of his boys. His face looked white and
clear and firm and undisturbed, Miriam wanted to arrest him and ask him
something--what he thought of the weather--he looked so different from
her memory of him in the saal two Saturdays ago--two weeks--four classes
she must have missed. Why? Why was she missing Pastor Lahmann's classes?
How had it happened? Perhaps she would see him in class again. Perhaps
next week....

The other visitors proved to be the Bergmanns in new dresses. Miriam
gazed at Clara as she went down the schoolroom to her corner of the
table. She looked like... a hostess. It seemed absurd to see her sit
down to tea as a school-girl. The dress was a fine black muslin stamped
all over with tiny fish-shaped patches of mauve. It was cut to the base
of the neck and came to a point in front where the soft white ruching
was fastened with a large cameo brooch. Clara's pallid worried face
had grown more placid during the hot inactive days, and to-day her hard
mouth looked patient and determined and responsible. She seemed quite
independent of her surroundings. Miriam found herself again and again
consulting her calm face. Her presence haunted Miriam throughout
tea-time. Emma was sweet, pink and bright after her rest in a bright
light brown muslin dress dotted with white spots....

Funny German dresses, thought Miriam, funny... and old. Her mind
hovered and wondered over these German dresses--did she like them or
not--something about them--she glanced at Elsa, sitting opposite in the
dull faint electric blue with black lace sleeves she had worn since
the warm weather set in. Even Ulrica, thin and straight now... like
a pole... in a tight flat dress of saffron muslin sprigged with brown
leaves, seemed to be included in something that made all these German
dresses utterly different from anything the English girls could have
worn. What was it? It was crowned by the Bergmanns' dresses. It had
begun in a summer dress of Minna's, black with a tiny sky-blue spot and
a heavy ruche round the hem. She thought she liked it. It seemed to
set the full tide of summer round the table more than the things of the
English girls--and yet the dresses were ugly--and the English girls'
dresses were not that... they were nothing... plain cottons and
zephyrs with lace tuckers--no ruches. It was something somehow in the
ruches--the ruches and the little peaks of neck.

A faint scent of camphor came from the Martins a