He added that he, too, must be getting along, and slipped out.

‘That was it, wasn’t it?’ said Miss Bulstrode. Her voice was brisk and businesslike. ‘Jennifer merely described it as fat. She didn’t realize it was a pregnant woman she had seen.’

‘Yes,’ said Eileen Rich. ‘That was it. I was going to have a child. I didn’t want to give up my job here. I carried on all right through the autumn, but after that, it was beginning to show. I got a doctor’s certificate that I wasn’t fit to carry on, and I pleaded illness. I went abroad to a remote spot where I thought I wasn’t likely to meet anyone who knew me. I came back to this country and the child was born—dead. I came back this term and I hoped that no one would ever know…But you understand now, don’t you, why I said I should have had to refuse your offer of a partnership if you’d made it? Only now, with the school in such a disaster, I thought that, after all, I might be able to accept.’

She paused and said in a matter of fact voice,

‘Would you like me to leave now? Or wait until the end of term?’

‘You’ll stay till the end of the term,’ said Miss Bulstrode, ‘and if there is a new term here, which I still hope, you’ll come back.’

‘Come back?’ said Eileen Rich. ‘Do you mean you still want me?’

‘Of course I want you,’ said Miss Bulstrode. ‘You haven’t murdered anyone, have you?—not gone mad over jewels and planned to kill to get them? I’ll tell you what you’ve done. You’ve probably denied your instincts too long. There was a man, you fell in love with him, you had a child. I suppose you couldn’t marry.’

‘There was never any question of marriage,’ said Eileen Rich. ‘I knew that. He isn’t to blame.’

‘Very well, then,’ said Miss Bulstrode. ‘You had a love affair and a child. You wanted to have that child?’

‘Yes,’ said Eileen Rich. ‘Yes, I wanted to have it.’

‘So that’s that,’ said Miss Bulstrode. ‘Now I’m going to tell you something. I believe that in spite of this love affair, your real vocation in life is teaching. I think your profession means more to you than any normal woman’s life with a husband and children would mean.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Eileen Rich. ‘I’m sure of that. I’ve known that all along. That’s what I really want to do—that’s the real passion of my life.’

‘Then don’t be a fool,’ said Miss Bulstrode. ‘I’m making you a very good offer. If, that is, things come right. We’ll spend two or three years together putting Meadowbank back on the map. You’ll have different ideas as to how that should be done from the ideas that I have. I’ll listen to your ideas. Maybe I’ll even give in to some of them. You want things to be different, I suppose, at Meadowbank?’