For a few moments she looked about and mused.  With one or two exceptions, she liked her pupils, and had led them patiently along the uphill road to knowledge.  They had made some progress, but she had lost her delight in leading.  For one thing, few would go far, and when they left her the rest would turn aside from the laborious pursuit of science into pleasant human paths and forget all that she had taught while they occupied themselves with the care of husband and children.  Moreover, she herself could not follow the climbing road to the heights where the light of knowledge burns brightest, as she once had hoped.  When the school term was finished she must turn back and begin again, at the bottom, to direct the faltering steps of another band.  But she sometimes wondered whether the beckoning light was not austere and cold.

She glanced at her dress.  It was a neutral color and like a uniform.  After all, she had physical charm and it was sometimes irksome to wear unbecoming clothes.  Then the lofty room, with its varnished desks and benches, looked bleak; her life was passed in bare class-rooms and echoing stone corridors.  This would not have mattered had she been able to follow her bent and take the line she had once marked out; but she could not.  She must give up the thought of independent research and teach for a living, cramping her talents to meet her pupils’ intelligence, until, in time, she sank to their level.

She roused herself with an effort and mechanically resumed her lecture, for her wandering thoughts now dwelt upon the foaming rivers and cool forests of the North.  The class-rooms smelt of varnish and throbbed with the monotonous rattle of the fan; in the wilds one breathed the resinous fragrance of the pines and heard the splash of running water.  For all that, she must not shirk her duty and she tried to make the meaning of the symbols on the board plainer to the languid girls.

By and by she remarked that they were more alert.  Some were making notes, and one or two looked past her with frank curiosity.  The door was behind the board, and Agatha had heard nobody come in, but when she looked round she saw a gray-haired gentleman standing near the lady principal.  He seemed to be listening to what she said and she thought his eyes twinkled as if he understood the difficulty of rousing her pupils’ interest.  This was somewhat embarrassing; but the school was famous and visitors were now and then shown round.

She paused, and the stranger turned to the principal.  “If you will allow me—­”

The principal smiled and he came up to Agatha, holding out his hand for the chalk.

“Suppose we alter the formula this way?” he said and wiped out the letters and figures.

Agatha studied him as he wrote fresh symbols.  He was plainly dressed and about sixty years of age.  There was nothing else worth noting, but he obviously knew his subject and she liked his face.  She saw that the girls could follow his explanation, but while suited to their understanding, it was, in one respect, not quite accurate.