"Eleven," he said, breaking the rapt silence.
She said, half humorously, half sadly: "Are you pleased with me?—Are you satisfied?—Do I quite come up to expectations?"
He started, looked towards her, and laughed. The laugh disturbed the silence of the room like the intrusion of something from millions of miles away. He made a humorous pretence of puzzling it out, as if it were a baffling problem, and said, finally, with mocking doubtfulness: "Well, on the whole, I think you do."
"If I had been on trial for a month you'd still keep me, then?" she went on, without moving her head out of her hands.
He answered, in the same vein as before: "If you could guarantee always to remain up to sample, I daresay I would."
She raised her head and gave him such a look as, if he had not learned to know it, would have made him think she was angry with him; it was sharp with blade-like eagerness, as if she were piercing through his attitude of jocularity.
Then, wondering why she did not smile when he was smiling, he put his arm round her and drew her burning lips to his. "Bedtime," he said, gaily, "for we've got to be up early in the morning."
Over about them as they clung together the spirit of Millstead, like a watchful friend, came suddenly close and intimate, and to Speed, opening his soul to it joyously, it appeared in the likeness of a golden-haired child, shy yet sombrely passionate—a wraith of a child that was just like Helen. Above all, they loved each other, these two, with a love that surrounded and enveloped all things in a magic haze: they were the perfect lovers. And over them the real corporeal Millstead brooded in constant magnificent calm.
II
Soon he was swallowed up in the joyous routine of term-time. He had never imagined that a housemaster had such a large amount of work to do. There were no early-morning forms during the winter term, however, and as also it was a housemaster's privilege to breakfast in his own rooms, Speed began the day with a happy three-quarters of an hour of newspaper-scanning, envelope-tearing, and chatting with Helen. After breakfast work began in earnest. Before term had lasted a week he discovered that he had at least twice as many duties as in the preceding term; the Head was certainly not intending to let him slack. There was the drawing and music of the whole school to superintend, as well as the choir and chapel-services which, as the once-famous Raggs became more and more decrepit, fell into Speed's direction almost automatically. Then also there were a large number of miscellaneous supervisory duties which the housemasters shared between them, and one or two, at least, which tradition decreed should be performed entirely by the junior housemaster. The result of it all was that Speed was, if he had been in the mood to desire a statutory eight hours' day, considerably overworked.