Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the PG Online Distributed
Proofreading Team
Author of "The Divine Fire"
1906
Miss Sinclair has expressed a desire to have this book republished inAmerica, because she considers it the best of her work previous to "TheDivine Fire." It originally appeared with another work in a volumeentitled "Two Sides of a Question," a small imported edition of which isnow exhausted.
Prologue.—Miss Quincey Stops the Way
"Stand back, Miss Quincey, if you please."
The school was filing out along the main corridor of St. Sidwell's. Itcame with a tramp and a rustle and a hiss and a tramp, urged to a trot bythe excited teachers. The First Division first, half-woman, carryingitself smoothly, with a swish of its long skirts, with a blush, a dreamyintellectual smile, or a steadfast impenetrable air, as it happened to bemore or less conscious of the presence of the Head. Then the SecondDivision, light-hearted, irrepressible, making a noise with its feet,loose hair flapping, pig-tails flopping to the beat of its march. Thenthe straggling, diminishing lines of the Third, a froth of whitepinafores, a confusion of legs, black or tan, staggering, shifting,shuffling in a frantic effort to keep time.
On it came in a waving stream; a stream that flickered with innumerableeyes, a stream that rippled with the wind of its own flowing, thatflushed and paled and brightened as some flower-face was tossed upwards,or some crest, flame-coloured or golden, flung back the light. A streamthat was one in its rhythm and in the sex that was its soul, obscurely orluminously feminine; it might have been a single living thing thatthrobbed and undulated, as girl after girl gave out the radiance andpulsation of her youth. The effect was overpowering; your senses judgedSt. Sidwell's by these brilliant types that gave life and colour to thestream. The rest were nowhere.
So at least it seemed to Miss Cursiter, the Head. That tall, lean,iron-grey Dignity stood at the cross junction of two corridors, talkingto Miss Rhoda Vivian, the new Classical Mistress. And while she talkedshe watched her girls as a general watches his columns wheeling intoaction. A dangerous spot that meeting of the corridors. There theprocession doubles the corner at a swinging curve, and there, time it asshe would, the little arithmetic teacher was doomed to fall foul of theprocession. Daily Miss Quincey thought to dodge the line; daily it caughther at the disastrous corner. Then Miss Quincey, desperate under the eyeof the Head, would try to rush the thing, with ridiculous results. AndFate or the Order of the day contrived that Miss Cursiter should alwaysbe there to witness her confusion