She was long in falling asleep. Naturally, she was elated and excited
by her success; but also a new and odd piece of knowledge had niched
itself in her brain. It was this. In your speech, your talk with
others, you must be exact to the point of pedantry, and never romance
or draw the long-bow; or you would be branded as an abominable liar.
Whereas, as soon as you put pen to paper, provided you kept one foot
planted on probability, you might lie as hard as you liked: indeed, the
more vigorously you lied, the louder would be your hearers' applause.

And Laura fell asleep over a chuckle.

XXII.

UND VERGESST MIR AUCH DAS GUTE LACHEN NICHT!

NIETZSCHE

And then, alas! just as she rode high on this wave of approbation,
Laura suffered another of those drops in the esteem of her fellows,
another of those mental upsets, which from time to time had thrown her
young life out of gear.

True, what now came was not exactly her own fault; though it is
doubtful whether a single one of her companions would have made her
free of an excuse. They looked on, round-eyed, mouths a-stretch. Once
more, the lambkin called Laura saw fit to sunder itself from the flock,
and to cut mad capers in sight of them all. And their delectation was
as frank as their former wrath had been.--As for Laura, as usual she
did not stop to think till it was too late; but danced lightly away to
her own undoing.

The affair began pleasantly enough. A member of the Literary Society
was the girl with the twinkly brown eyes--she who had gone out of her
way to give Laura a kindly word after the Shepherd debacle. This girl,
Evelyn Souttar by name, was also the only one of the audience who had
not joined in the laugh provoked by Laura's first appearance as an
author. Laura had never forgotten this; and she would smile shyly at
Evelyn when their looks met. But a dozen reasons existed why there
should have been no further rapport between them. Although now in the
fifth form, Laura had remained childish for her age: whereas Evelyn was
over eighteen, and only needed to turn up her hair to be quite
grown-up. She had matriculated the previous Christmas, and was at
present putting away a rather desultory half-year, before leaving
school for good. In addition, she was rich, pampered and very
pretty--the last comrade in the world for drab little Laura.

One evening, as the latter was passing through the dining-hall, she
found Evelyn, who studied where she