“ I don’t want one,” said Beatrice, firmly. “I’d rather have a motorcycle.” Annie looked annoyed; but laughed when Harriet laughed.

“She’ll find out some day, won’t she, madam?”

“Very likely she will,” said Harriet. If the woman took the view that any husband was better than none at all, it was useless to argue. And she had rather got into the habit of shying at all discussion that turned upon men and marriage. She said good-afternoon pleasantly and strode on, a little shaken in her mood, but not unduly so. Either one liked discussing these matters or one did not. And when there were ugly phantoms lurking in the corners of one’s mind, skeletons that one dared not show to anybody, even to Peter-

Well, of course not to Peter; he was the last person. And he, at any rate, had, no niche in the grey stones of Oxford. He stood for London, for the swift, rattling, chattering, excitable and devilishly upsetting world of strain and uproar. Here, at the still centre (yes, that line was definitely good), he had no place. For a whole week, she had scarcely given him a thought.

And then the dons began to arrive, full of their vacation activities and ready to take up the burden of the most exacting, yet most lovable term of the academic year. Harriet watched them come, wondering which of those cheerful and determined faces concealed a secret. Miss de Vine had been consulting a library in some ancient Flemish town, where was preserved a remarkable family correspondence dealing with trade conditions between England and Flanders under Elizabeth. Her mind was full of statistics about wool and pepper, and it was difficult to get her to think back to what she had done on the last day of the Hilary Term. She had undoubtedly burnt some old papers-there might have been newspapers among them-certainly she never read the Daily Trumpet-she could throw no light on the mutilated newspaper found in the fireplace.

Miss Lydgate-as Harriet had expected-had contrived in a few short weeks to make havoc of her proofs. She was apologetic. She had spent a most interesting long week-end with Professor Somebody, who was a great authority upon Greek quantitative measures; and he had discovered several passages that contained inaccuracies and thrown an entirely fresh light upon the argument of Chapter Seven. Harriet groaned dismally.

Miss Shaw had taken five other students for a reading-party, had seen four new plays and bought a rather exciting summer outfit. Miss Pyke had spent an enthralling time assisting the curator of a local museum to put together the fragments of three figured pots and a quantity of burial-urns that had been dug up in a field in Essex. Miss Hillyard was really glad to be back in Oxford; she had had to spend a month at her sister’s house while the sister was having a baby; looking after her brother-in-law seemed to have soured her temper. The Dean, on the other hand, had been helping to get a niece married and had found the whole business full of humour. “One of the bridesmaids went to the wrong church and only turned up when it was all over, and there were at least two hundred of us squeezed into a room that would only hold fifty, and I only got half a glass of champagne and no wedding-cake, my tummy was flapping against my spine; and the bridegroom lost his hat at the last moment, and, my dear! would you believe it? people still give plated biscuit-barrels!” Miss Chilperic had gone with her fiancé and his sister to a number of interesting places to study mediaeval domestic sculpture. Miss Burrows had spent most of her time playing golf. There arrived also a reinforcement in the person of Miss Edwards, the Science tutor, just returned from taking a term’s leave. She was a young and active woman, square in face and shoulder, with bobbed hair and a stand-no-nonsense manner. The only member missing from the Senior Common Room was Mrs. Goodwin, whose small son (a most unfortunate child) had come out with measles immediately upon his return to school and again required his mother’s nursing.

“Of course she can’t help it,” said the Dean, “but it’s a very great nuisance, just at the beginning of the Summer Term. If I’d only known, I could have come back earlier.”

“I don’t see,” observed Miss Hillyard, grimly, “what else you can expect, if you give jobs to widows with children. You have to be prepared for these perpetual interruptions. And for some reason, these domestic pre-occupations always have to be put before the work.”

“Well,” said the Dean, “one must put work aside in a case of serious illness.”

“But all children get measles.”

“Yes; but he’s not a very strong child, you know. His father was tubercular, poor man-in fact, that’s what he died of-and if measles should turn to pneumonia, as it so often does, the consequences might be serious.”

“But has it turned to pneumonia?”

“They’re afraid it may. He’s got it very badly. And, as he’s a nervous little creature, he naturally likes to have his mother with him. And in any case, she’ll be in quarantine.”

“The longer she stays with him, the longer she’ll be in quarantine.”

“It’s very tiresome, of course,” put in Miss Lydgate, mildly. “But if Mrs. Goodwin had isolated herself and come back at the earliest possible moment-as she very bravely offered to do-she would have been suffering a great deal of anxiety.”

“A great many of us have to suffer from anxiety in one way or another,” said Miss Hillyard, sharply. “I have been very anxious about my sister. It is always an anxious business to have a first baby at thirty-five. But if the event had happened to occur in term-time, it would have had to take place without my assistance.”

“It is always difficult to say which duty one should put first,” said Miss Pyke. “Each case must be decided individually. I presume that, in bringing children into the world one accepts a certain responsibility towards them.”

“I’m not denying it,” said Miss Hillyard. “But if the domestic responsibility is to take precedence of the public responsibility, then the work should be handed over to someone else to do.”

“But the children must be fed and clothed,” said Miss Edwards.

“Quite so. But the mother should not take a resident post.”

“Mrs. Goodwin is an excellent secretary,” said the Dean. “I should be very sorry to lose her. And it’s nice to think that we are able to help her in her very difficult position.”

Miss Hillyard lost patience.

“The fact is, though you will never admit it, that everybody in this place has an inferiority complex about married women and children. For all your talk about careers and independence, you all believe in your hearts that we ought to abase ourselves before any woman who has fulfilled her animal functions.”

“That is absolute nonsense,” said the Bursar.

“It is natural, I suppose, to feel that married women lead a fuller life,” began Miss Lydgate.

“And a more useful one,” retorted Miss Hillyard. “Look at the fuss that’s made over ‘ Shrewsbury grandchildren’! Look how delighted you all are when old students get married! As if you were saying ‘Aha! education doesn’t unfit us for real life after all!’ And when a really brilliant scholar throws away all her prospects to marry a curate, you say perfunctorily, ‘What a pity! But of course her own life must come first.’”

“I’ve never said such a thing,” cried the Dean indignantly. “I always say they’re perfect fools to marry.”

“I shouldn’t mind,” said Miss Hillyard, unheeding, “if you said openly that intellectual interests were only a second-best; but you pretend to put them first in theory and are ashamed of them in practice.”

“There’s no need to get so heated about it,” said Miss Barton, breaking in upon the angry protest of Miss Pyke. “After all, some of us may have deliberately chosen not to marry. And, if you will forgive my saying so-”

At this ominous phrase, always the prelude to something quite unforgivable, Harriet and the Dean broke hastily into the discussion.