On her way out, walking listlessly through the quadrangle where the professors live, she heard behind her the footsteps of some one gaining on her, and before she had reached the postern, a man passed her stepping quickly in the dusk. She saw that he was smallish and slight, that he wore no overcoat; and something foreign about his alert figure drew her attention. The next moment, as if in response to this, the stranger turned his head, and regarded her fixedly. Thereupon Joanna’s observation ceased to be conscious. She had become too acutely aware of herself under his curiously frank scrutiny.

She carried home with her the impression of a white small-featured face that seemed scornfully alive. The man must be a foreigner – probably an Italian. Who else should he be but Dr. Cellebrini, the Italian lecturer, whom, as it happened, she did not know by sight? The certainty that he could be none other quickened her failing resolve to join the class of which he was the teacher.

III

On the opening day, a week later, she arrived ten minutes before the hour of the lesson to find herself alone with one young man amid a shabby expanse of benches. Both fellow students were too shy speak, and Joanna observing no more than that her companion was dark and bashful chose a place at some distance from him. The ordinary University youth did not interest her, even while he might embarrass her; and she gazed with suppressed excitement at the dusty Gothic window-panes on which flaws of rain were appearing.

There was no doubt in her mind that the lecturer would be the stranger who had stared at her by the gate.

Presently a third person came in, and Joanna recognized a Mrs. Lovatt to whom she had been introduced not long ago at an evening entertainment at the Art School. Mrs. Lovatt, a great friend of the Director, was a patron of the arts and a well-known figure in the West End. Joanna blushed with pleasure now when the little woman greeted her unhesitatingly.

“I’ve forgotten your name,” she said, “but I remember quite well being introduced to you by my friend Val Plummer.” And she sat down by Joanna bemoaning the size of the class. She was a middle-aged woman, but girlish-looking, with very bright eyes in her wrinkled, pretty face. Under a soft grey felt hat, her grey hair showed in a becoming disorder, and with her grey, flowing clothes, she looked like a dishevelled but attractive and perfectly composed little grey mouse. She remembered admiring Joanna’s appearance, and studied her now with bright approval, and also with what Joanna felt to be a touch of amused criticism. Without knowing it, the girl coveted the elder woman’s ease and her general air of experience.