y were brought up in so much ignorance, and his soul rebelled. He
thought to himself that they should be armed from the beginning with
wisdom.

He was relieved that at first he saw in none of the girl-faces before
him anything which resembled in the slightest degree the expression
which he had seen in Lucy Ayres's. These girls, most of them
belonging to the village (there were a few from outside, for this was
an endowed school, ranking rather higher than an ordinary
institution), revealed in their faces one of three interpretations of
character. Some were full of young mischief, chafing impatiently at
the fetters of school routine. They were bubbling over with innocent
animal life; they were longing to be afield at golf or tennis. They
hated their books.

Some were frankly coquettish and self-conscious, but in a most
healthy and normal fashion. These frequently adjusted stray locks of
hair, felt of their belts at their backs to be sure that the
fastenings were intact, then straightened themselves with charming
little feminine motions. Their flowerlike faces frequently turned
towards the teacher, and there was in them a perfect consciousness of
the facts of sex and charm, but it was a most innocent, even
childlike consciousness.

The last type belonged to those intent upon their books, soberly
adjusted to the duties of life already, with little imagination or
emotion. This last was in the minority.

"Thank God!" Horace thought, as his eyes met one and another of the
girl-faces. "She is not, cannot be, a common type." And then he felt
something like a chill of horror as his eyes met those of a new
pupil, a girl from Alford, who had only entered the school the day
before. She was not well dressed. There was nothing coquettish about
her, but in her eyes shone the awful, unreasoning hunger which he had
seen before. Upon her shoulders, young as they were, was the same
burden, the burden as old as creation, which she was required to bear
by a hard destiny, perhaps of heredity. There was something horribly
pathetic in the girl's shy, beseeching, foolish gaze at Horace. She
was younger and shyer than Lucy and, although not so pretty,
immeasurably more pathetic.

"Another," thought Horace. It was a great relief to him when, only a
week later, this girl found an admirer in one of the schoolboys, who,
led by some strange fascination, followed her instead of one of the
prettier, more attractive girls. Then the girl began to l