e
she could put this resolve into force, she had to let her first
indignation subside: only then was it possible for her to recover the
shattering of her faith, and settle down to practise religion after the
glib and shallow mode of her friends. She did not, however, say her
prayers that night, or for many a right to come; and when, at church,
Christ's name occurred in the Service, she held her head erect, and
shut the ears and eyes of her soul.

XXV.

IHR LERNTET ALLE NICHT TANZEN, WIE MAN TANZEN MUSS--UBER EUCH HINWEG
TANZEN!

NIETZSCHE

The school year had ebbed; the ceremonies that attended its conclusion
were over. A few days beforehand, the fifth-form boarders, under the
tutelage of a couple of governesses, drove off early in the morning to
the distant university. On the outward journey the candidates were
thoughtful and subdued; but as they returned home, in the late
afternoon, their spirits were not to be kept within seemly bounds. They
laughed, sang, and rollicked about inside the wagonette, Miss Zielinski
weakly protesting unheard--were so rowdy that the driver pushed his
cigar-stump to the corner of his mouth, to be able to smile at ease,
and flicked his old horse into a canter. For the public examination had
proved as anticipated, child's play, compared with what the class had
been through at Dr Pughson's hands; and its accompanying details were
of an agreeable nature: the weather was not too hot; the
examination-hall was light and airy; through the flung-back windows
trees and flowering shrubs looked in; the students were watched over by
a handsome Trinity man, who laid his straw hat on the desk before him.

Then came the annual concert, at which none of the performers broke
down; Speech Day, when the body of a big hall was crowded with
relatives and friends, and when so many white, blue-beribboned frocks
were massed together on the platform, that this looked like a great bed
of blue and white flowers; and, finally, trunks were brought out from
boxrooms and strewn through the floors, and upper-form girls emptied
cupboards and drawers into them for the last time.

On the evening before the general dispersion, Laura, Cupid, and M. P.
walked the well-known paths of the garden once again. While the two
elder girls were more loquacious than their wont, Laura was quieter.
She had never wholly recovered her humour since the day of the
history-examination; and she still could not look back, with c