Miss Cursiter bore down on her with her steady gaze, a gaze that was a menace and an appeal, and Rhoda gave a little gasp as if for breath.

“I can’t go any farther.”

“Do you realize what this means?  You are not a deserter from the ranks.  It is the second in command going over to the enemy.”

The words were cold, but there was a fiery court-martial in Miss Cursiter’s eyes that accused and condemned her.  If Rhoda had been dashing her head against the barrack walls her deliverance was at hand.  It seemed that she could never strike a blow for Miss Quincey without winning the battle for herself.

“I can’t help it,” said she.  “I hate it—­I hate the system.”

“The system?  Suppose you do away with it—­do away with every woman’s college in the kingdom—­have you anything to put in its place?”

“No.  I have nothing to put in its place.”

“Ah,” said Miss Cursiter, “you are older than I thought.”

Rhoda smiled.  By this time, wrong or right, she was perfectly reckless.  If everybody was right in rejecting Miss Quincey, there was rapture in being wildly and wilfully in the wrong.  She had flung up the game.

Miss Cursiter saw it.  “I was right,” said she.  “You are under an influence, and a dangerous one.”

“Perhaps—­but, influence for influence” (here Rhoda returned Miss Cursiter’s gaze intrepidly), “I’m not far wrong.  I honestly think that if we persist in turning out these intellectual monstrosities we shall hand over worse incompetents than Miss Quincey to the next generation.”

Rhoda was intrepid; all the same she reddened as she realized what a mouthpiece she had become for Bastian Cautley’s theories and temper.

“My dear Rhoda, you’re an intellectual monstrosity yourself.”

“I know.  And in another twenty years’ time they’ll want to get rid of me.”

“Of me too,” thought the Head.  Miss Cursiter felt curiously old and worn.  She had invoked Rhoda’s youth and it had risen up against her.  Influence for influence, her power was dead.

Rhoda had talked at length in the hope of postponing judgment in Miss Quincey’s case; now she was anxious to get back to Miss Quincey, to escape judgment in her own.

“And how about Miss Quincey?” she asked.

Miss Cursiter had nothing to say about Miss Quincey.  She had done with that section of her subject.  She understood that Rhoda had said in effect, “If Miss Quincey goes, I go too.”  Nevertheless her mind was made up; in tissue paper, all ready for Miss Quincey.

Unfortunately tissue paper is more or less transparent, and Miss Quincey had no difficulty in perceiving the grounds of her dismissal when presented to her in this neat way.  Not even when Miss Cursiter said to her, at the close of the interview they had early the next morning, “For your own sake, dear Miss Quincey, I feel we must forego your valuable—­most valuable services.”