The garden, the river, the children next door were far away. Sometimes when you listened, there was nothing to be heard, not even Roddy; sometimes the bird-calls, the wet green scatters of buds, the flowering cherry-tree; sometimes the sunny mown lawn in stripes, the red rambler clouds heavy on the hot wall; sometimes the mists, the bloom on the clouds, the fallen yellow leaves in the dew; sometimes the rooks rocking in the blown treetops, the strong dark bewildering pattern of bare branches swirling across the sky, the tragic light crying out for a moment at sunset, haggard through torn clouds, then drowned again: sometimes these moved in their seasons through the garden so faintly behind your shut eyes they stirred no pang. Sometimes the silent group waiting in the darkness by the river had vanished as if they had been childish things put away. Time flowed imperceptibly, casting up trifles here and there upon its banks. 3 King’s Chapel at Evensong. The coloured windows faded gradually out: only a twilight blue was left beneath the roof: and that died too. Then, only the double rows of candle-flames gave light, pointing and floating above the immemorial shadows of the floor and the shadows of benches and the shadowed faces of old men and youths. Hushed prayer echoed; and the long rolling organ-waves rose and fell, half-drowning the singing and setting it free again. All was muffled, flickering, submerged deep under cloudy water. Jennifer sat there motionless, wistful-eyed and unconscious, neither kneeling nor standing with others, but leaning rigidly back with eyes fixed and brilliant. And afterwards came the emerging into a strange town swallowed up in mist. White surprising faces glimmered and vanished under the lamps. The buildings loomed formlessly in the dense sky, picked out by dimly-lit windows, and forlorn lanterns in the gateways. The life of Cambridge was thickly enshrouded; but under the folds you felt it stir more buoyantly than ever, with sudden laughter and talk dropping from the windows, weighing oddly in the air: as if the town were encouraging her children to sleep by drawing the curtain; while they, very lively at bedtime, went on playing behind it. 4 The lecture room window-pane was full of treetops--a whirl and sweep of black twigs on the sky. The room swam and shone in a faint translucent flood; and a bird called on three wild enquiring notes. These skies of February twilights had primroses in them, and floods; and with the primroses, a thought of green. The small creakings, breathings and shufflings of the lecture room went on. The men: rows of heads of young looking hair; bored restless shoulders hunched beneath their gowns; sprawling grey flannel legs. The women: attentive rather anxious faces under their injudicious hats; well-behaved backs; hands writing, writing. Clods, all of them, stones, worse than senseless things. The lecturer thought smoothly aloud, not caring who besides himself listened to him.