It was so necessary to talk; you had to, and with someone who could understand or sympathise with your ideas. How they would talk, June and he, for she must and would understand how he needed someone young. When you were blind and beginning to make discoveries, you had to tell them to somebody; besides, talking was the only thing you could do as well as anyone else. And surely she would not dance, for who was there to dance with her, unless there was another man? Perhaps there was, and then the whole dull round of country conversation would go round again, and when one had gone through it so often before. Let them talk about things, not people. And then, of course, they could talk about themselves. Why had he never learnt to play the piano? It would be so nice to be able to sit down and make the lazy notes ripple through this echoing house, up the stairs and through doors and windows to be lost in the wetness of the garden. She had known how. She had played music wandering out to the gossamer, and so quiet; as raindrops gather on a twig and then slip off, so had her notes fallen in such a silver, liquid sound. But then the sun came out. It was changed now. The hut, the trees and each leaf suddenly had a spirit of their own. And the wind bore them down to you that they might whisper in your ear, and be companions as you sat in the dark. So that you were not really lonely; there were only the deaf who were really cut off. How dreadful to be deaf, not to hear this wind choosing out the leaves and carrying them down gently that they might rustle on the ground. Would June be like this? So that she could sit still and listen. Surely she would not want to break out into a great screaming laugh to announce that someone had been hurt, or something broken? She also might have dreams and be able to understand his, perhaps. And yet she would not be sickly, but rather like a sunflower, absorbing from the sun, and so proud, so still. Women were like flowers; it was silly, but they were. The sudden flutter of wings of a bird who was going elsewhere to drink more in and pour it out again to the sun brought the grass and trees together, and the earth that kept them both. Women understood like that. Their intuitions exalted them to the simple understanding of the trees, for trees were so simple; there was no remoteness in them as of mountains and their false sublimity. But he had not met any women who were women. Still, June felt like that, and her loneliness would have taught her silence, for she could not have met many people.