The teachers, too, had kindly feelings for her. The words, "Lilly, you are dreaming," which sometimes came from the platform, sounded more like a caress than a reproach. As head of the newcomers in the 1 B class she sat for a time at the end of the sixth row, and more than one hand gave her hair a paternal stroke in passing.
Her nickname was "Lilly with the eyes." Her schoolmates declared such eyes were absolutely improbable, such eyes _could_ not exist. "Cat eyes," "nixie eyes," are samples of the epithets bestowed upon them. Some maintained they were violet, some knew for sure she penciled her lids. However that may be, he who looked at her face saw eyes and nothing but eyes, and was content to look no further.
When fifteen and a half years old Lilly passed from the first-year class into the Selecta, the class for advanced pupils, for it had been decided that she was to earn her living as a governess.
With this came a change in many respects; new teachers, new subjects of study, new companions and a new tone in intercourse. Nobody was addressed by the first name; the throwing of paper balls ceased, and no one on going home found bits of paper stuck in her hair. Phrases like "sacredness of a vocation" and "consecration of life" were cheapened by repetition; but so also were love episodes and secret betrothals.
For the first time Lilly experienced a slight feeling of envy--she was neither engaged, nor did the least love affair come her way. Such trivialities as anonymous bouquets or verses bearing the superscription, "Thine forever," with two initial letters intertwined, were, of course, not to be counted.
But her time came. Her love was compounded of marble statues and temple pillars, of evergreen cypresses and a sky eternally blue, of pity and yearning for the far-off, of a pupil's adoration for her teacher, and of a desire to save.
He was assistant instructor in science in the girls' high school, and taught in the lower grades, where the ruler is still used on pupils' knuckles and tongues are stuck out behind the teacher's back in revenge. He gave no instruction whatever in the higher classes, but delivered lectures on the history of art to the Selecta.
"History of art." The very words are enough to send a shiver of ecstasy through a maiden's soul. How much greater the charm when a suffering young man with deep-set, burning eyes and a lily-white forehead expounds the subject!