Miss Smith was at home sick, and the
principal had put Mathematics III A on their honour. For a time
Missy joined in their honourable pursuit of giggles and badinage.
But Raymond had welcomed her as if the fun must mount to something
yet higher when she came; she felt a "secret, deep, interior urge"
to show what she could do. The seductive May air stole into her
blood, a stealthy, intoxicating elixir, and finally the Inspiration
came, with such tumultuous swiftness that she could never have told
whence or how. Passed on to her fellows, it was caught up with an
ardour equally mad and unreckoning. One minute the unpastored flock
of Mathematics III A were leaning out the windows, sniffing in the
lilac scents wafted over from Mrs. Clifton's yard; the next they
were scurrying, tip-toe, flushed, laughing, jostling, breathless,
out through the cloak-room, down the stairs, through the side-door,
across the stretch of school-yard, toward a haven beyond Mrs.
Clifton's lilac hedge.
Where were they going? They did not know. Why had they started? They
did not know. What the next step? They did not know.
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