When she was a nun, sooner or later one and the other of the Brodie set came to visit Sandy, because it was something to do, and she had written her book of psychology, and everyone likes to visit a nun, it provides a spiritual sensation, a catharsis to go home with, especially if the nun clutches the bars of the grille. Rose came, now long since married to a successful business man who varied in his line of business from canned goods to merchant banking. They fell to talking about Miss Brodie.

“She talked a lot about dedication,” said Rose, “but she didn’t mean your sort of dedication. But don’t you think she was dedicated to her girls in a way?”

“Oh yes, I think she was,” said Sandy.

“Why did she get the push?” said Rose. “Was it sex?”

“No, politics.”

“I didn’t know she bothered about politics.”

“It was only a side line,” Sandy said, “but it served as an excuse.”

Monica Douglas came to visit Sandy because there was a crisis in her life. She had married a scientist and in one of her fits of anger had thrown a live coal at his sister. Whereupon the scientist demanded a separation, once and for all.

“I’m not much good at that sort of problem,” said Sandy. But Monica had not thought she would be able to help much, for she knew Sandy of old, and persons known of old can never be of much help. So they fell to talking of Miss Brodie.

“Did she ever get Rose to sleep with Teddy Lloyd?” said Monica.

“No,” said Sandy.

“Was she in love with Teddy Lloyd herself?”

“Yes,” said Sandy, “and he was in love with her.”

“Then it was a real renunciation in a way,” said Monica.

“Yes, it was,” said Sandy. “After all, she was a woman in her prime.”

“You used to think her talk about renunciation was a joke,” said Monica.

“So did you,” said Sandy.

In the summer of nineteen-thirty-eight, after the last of the Brodie set had left Blaine, Miss Brodie went to Germany and Austria, while Sandy read psychology and went to the Lloyds’ to sit for her own portrait. Rose came and kept them company occasionally.

When Deirdre Lloyd took the children into the country Teddy had to stay on in Edinburgh because he was giving a summer course at the art school. Sandy continued to sit for her portrait twice a week, and sometimes Rose came and sometimes not.

One day when they were alone, Sandy told Teddy Lloyd that all his portraits, even that of the littlest Lloyd baby, were now turning out to be likenesses of Miss Brodie, and she gave him her insolent blackmailing stare. He kissed her as he had done three years before when she was fifteen, and for the best part of five weeks of the summer they had a love affair in the empty house, only sometimes answering the door to Rose, but at other times letting the bell scream on.