“She has been forced, here, in this school, to hear talking”—Fräulein’s voice thickened—“of men....”
“Männer—geschichten ... here!”
“Männer—geschichten.” Fräulein’s voice rang out down the table. She bent forward so that the light from both the windows behind her fell sharply across her grey-clad shoulders and along the top of her head. There was no condemnation Miriam felt in those broad grey shoulders—they were innocent. But the head shining and flat, the wide parting, the sleekness of the hair falling thinly and flatly away from it—angry, dreadful skull. She writhed away from it. She would not look any more. She felt her neck was swelling inside her collar-band.
Fräulein whispered low.
“Here in my school, here standing round this table are those who talk of—men.
“Young girls ... who talk ... of men.”
While Fräulein waited, trembling, several of the girls began to snuffle and sob.
“Is there, can there be in the world anything that is more base, more vile, more impure? Is there? Is there?”
Miriam wished she knew who was crying. She tried to fix her thoughts on a hole in the table-cover. “It could be darned.... It could be darned.”
“You are brought here together, each and all of you here together in the time of your youth. It is, it should be for you the most beautiful occasion. Can you find anything more terrible than that such occasion where all may work and influence each other—for all life—in purity and goodness—that such occasion should be used—impurely? Like a dawn, like a dawn for purity should be the life of a maiden. Calm, and pure and with holy prayer.”