They made a wood fire and watched it sink to crumbling feathery ash round a glowing core; and they ate oranges and tomatoes and very young small lettuces stolen from the garden by Martin who was still, so Roddy said, a tiger for raw vegetables. But there were no onions: he declared he had given them up. Nothing memorable was said or done, yet all seemed significant, and her happiness grew to such a poignant ecstasy that her lips trembled. She rolled over and hid her face in her hands for fear it should betray her by indecent radiance; but nobody noticed. Their eyes looked calm and dreaming: even Mariella’s had a less blind stare, a depth of meditation. If only the moment could stay fixed, if their strange and thoughtful faces could enclose her safely for ever in their trance of contentment, if she could be able to want nothing from them beyond a share of their unimpassioned peace: if only these things could be, they would be best. For a moment they seemed possible; for a moment she achieved a summit and clung briefly to it, tasting the cool taste of no desire. But it would not do: it was the taste of being old and past wanting people,--past wanting Roddy who already tasted so sharply and sweetly that she must have more of him and more of him; and whose presence in the circle made collective indifference a pretence too bleak to strive for. The sun flooded the meadow all at once in a tide of pallid light; and the earth ceased to struggle and brood in the dark coil of itself, and spread itself smiling and released. The spell within the clouded crystal of the afternoon broke; they stretched and stirred. Judith looked up at the big elm. ‘Who can climb this?’ she said. ‘Up with you,’ said Martin. She climbed as she had not climbed since childhood, lifting herself lightly, unhesitatingly from branch to branch. At the top she looked down and saw them all small beneath her, looking up. Boldly from her eminence she called to the little creatures to come up; but not one of them would. She descended again, feeling young and silly in the face of their lack of physical ambition. But they were all smiling upwards to receive her. Martin held his hands up to her and she took them and jumped from the bottom bough. ‘You haven’t forgotten your stuff,’ he said, and his eyes dwelt on her with their faithful brown look. ‘I wish I could do that,’ said Mariella. ‘I never could.’ ‘And now,’ said Julian, ‘divert us with a hand spring or so,’--and his harsh face looked half-amused, half-clouded with an odd look,--almost like jealousy. He had never been really pleased with the spectacle of other people’s successes: He found it too bitter not to be himself the one to excel. But he could not trouble her to-day or make her doubtful. Roddy said nothing,--only looked at her out of glinting, twinkling eyes. It was time to go home.