When it left off the white sound patterns of poems came instead. They floated down through the dark as she lay on her back in her hard, narrow bed. Out of doors, her feet, muffled in wet moor grass, went to a beat, a clang. She would never play well. At any minute her father's voice or her mother's eyes would stiffen her fingers and stop them. She knew what she would do; she had always known. She would make poems. They couldn't hear you making poems. They couldn't see your thoughts falling into sound patterns. Only part of the pattern would appear at once while the rest of it went on sounding from somewhere a long way off. When all the parts came together the poem was made. You felt as if you had made it long ago, and had forgotten it and remembered. III. The room held her close, cold and white, a nun's cell. If you counted the window-place it was shaped like a cross. The door at the foot, the window at the head, bookshelves at the end of each arm. A kitchen lamp with a tin reflector, on a table, stood in the breast of the cross. Its flame was so small that she had to turn it on to her work like a lantern. "Dumpetty, dumpetty dum. Tell them that Bion is dead; he is dead, young Bion, the shepherd. And with him music is dead and Dorian poetry perished--" She had the conceited, exciting thought: "I am translating Moschus, the Funeral Song for Bion." Moschus was Bion's friend. She wondered whether he had been happy or unhappy, making his funeral song. If you could translate it all: if you could only make patterns out of English sounds that had the hardness and stillness of the Greek. "'Archet', Sikelikai, to pentheos, archet' Moisai, adones hai pukinoisin oduramenai poti phullois.'" The wind picked at the pane. Through her thick tweed coat she could feel the air of the room soak like cold water to her skin. She curved her aching hands over the hot globe of the lamp. --Oduromenai. Mourning? No. You thought of black crape, bunched up weepers, red faces. The wick spluttered; the flame leaned from the burner, gave a skip and went out. Oduromenai--Grieving; perhaps. Suddenly she thought of Maurice Jourdain. She saw him standing in the field path. She heard him say "Talk to _me_. I'm alive. I'm here. I'll listen. I'll never misunderstand." She saw his worn eyelids; his narrow, yellowish teeth. Supposing he was dead-- She would forget about him for months together; then suddenly she would remember him like that. Being happy and excited made you remember. She tried not to see his eyelids and his teeth. They didn't matter. IV. The season of ungovernable laughter had begun. "Roddy, they'll hear us. We m-m-mustn't." "I'm not. I'm blowing my nose." "I wish _I_ could make it sound like that." They stood on the Kendals' doorstep, in the dark, under the snow. Snow powdered the flagstone path swept ready for the New Year's party. "Think," she said, "their poor party. It would be awful of us."