After all, above the turmoil of emotion a little tremulous, attenuated
ideal was trying to raise its head. Her duty. She dimly discerned a
possibility of deliverance, of purification from her sin. Therefore she
clung more desperately than ever to her post. Seeing that she had served
the system for five-and-twenty years, it was hard if she could not get
from it a little protection against her own weakness, if she could not
claim the intellectual support it professed to give. It was the first
time she had ever put it to the test. If she could only stay on another
year or two--

And now at the very end of the midsummer term it really looked as if St.
Sidwell's was anxious to keep her. Everybody was curiously kind; the
staff cast friendly glances on her as she sat in her corner; Rhoda was
almost passionate in her tenderness. Even Miss Cursiter seemed softened.
She had left off saying "Stand back, Miss Quincey, if you please"; and
Miss Quincey began to wonder what it all meant.

She was soon to know.

One night, the last of the term, the Classical Mistress was closeted with
the Head. Rhoda, elbow-deep in examination papers, had been critically
considering seventy variously ingenious renderings of a certain chorus,
when the sudden rapping of a pen on the table roused her from her
labours.

"You must see for yourself, Rhoda, how we are placed. We must keep up to
a certain standard of efficiency in the staff. Miss Quincey is getting
past her work."

(Rhoda became instantly absorbed in sharpening a pencil.)