The girls came in and out, but I never noticed them; and when the breakfast bell rang, I shoved the book into my desk and ran downstairs to breakfast.  I observed that Ethel’s place was empty; none of the girls looked at me, but munched their bread and sipped their tepid tea while Mademoiselle made a few frigid general remarks and, after saying a French grace, left the room.

“Well,” said I, “what’s the row?”

Silence.

Margot (looking from face to face):  “Ah!  The mot d’ordre is that you are not to speak to me.  Is that the idea?”

Silence.

Margot (vehemently, with bitterness):  “This is exactly what I thought would happen at a girls’ school—­that I should find myself boycotted and betrayed.”

First girl (bursting out):  “Oh, Margot, it’s not that at all!  It’s because Ethel won’t betray you that we are all to be punished to-day!”

Margot:  “What!  Collective punishment?  And I am the only one to get off?  How priceless!  Well, I must say this is Mlle. de Mennecy’s first act of justice.  I’ve been so often punished for all of you that I’m sure you won’t mind standing me this little outing!  Where is Ethel?  Why don’t you answer? (Very slowly) Oh, all right!  I have done with you!  And I shall leave this very day, so help me God!”

On hearing that Mlle. de Mennecy had dismissed Ethel on the spot because the engine-driver had kissed his hand to her, I went immediately and told her the whole story; all she answered was that I was such a liar she did not believe a word I said.

I assured her that I was painfully truthful by nature, but her circular and senseless punishments had so frightened the girls that lying had become the custom of the place and I felt in honour bound to take my turn in the lies and the punishments.  After which I left the room and the school.

On my arrival in Grosvenor Square I told my parents that I must go home to Glen, as I felt suffocated by the pettiness and conventionality of my late experience.  The moderate teaching and general atmosphere of Gloucester Crescent had depressed me, and London feels airless when one is out of spirits:  in any case it can never be quite a home to any one born in Scotland.

The only place I look upon as home which does not belong to me is Archerfield [Footnote:  Archerfield belonged to Mrs. Hamilton Ogilvie, of Beale.]—­a house near North Berwick, in which we lived for seven years.  After Glen and my cottage in Berkshire, Archerfield is the place I love best in the world.  I was both happier and more miserable there than I have ever been in my life.  Just as William James has written on varieties of religious experience, so I could write on the varieties of my moral and domestic experiences at that wonderful place.  If ever I were to be as unhappy again as I was there, I would fly to the shelter of those Rackham woods, seek isolation on those curving coasts where the gulls shriek and dive and be ultimately healed by the beauty of the anchored seas which bear their islands like the Christ Child on their breasts.