She was aware of something underneath it, something that was growing more and more beautiful every minute. She was trying to smash this thing lest it should grow more beautiful than she could bear. "You see how I score by being shut up in Morfe. When I do get out it's no end of an adventure." (Was there ever such an idiot?) Suddenly she left off trying to smash the silence. The silence made everything stand out with a supernatural clearness, the square, white-clothed table in the bay of the window, the Queen Anne fluting on the Britannia metal teapot, the cups and saucers and plates, white with a gentian blue band, The King's Head stamped in gold like a crest. Sitting there so still he had the queer effect of creating for both of you a space of your own, more real than the space you had just stepped out of. There, there and not anywhere else, these supernaturally clear things had reality, a unique but impermanent reality. It would last as long as you sat there and would go when you went. You knew that whatever else you might forget you would remember this. The rest of the room, the other tables and the people sitting at them were not quite real. They stood in another space, a different and inferior kind of space. "I came first of all," he said, "to bring you _that_." He took out of his pocket and put down between them the thin, new white parchment book of her _Poems_. "Oh ... Poor thing, I wonder what'll happen to it?" Funny--it was the least real thing. If it existed at all it existed somewhere else, not in this space, not in this time. If you took it up and looked at it the clearness, the unique, impermanent reality would be gone, and you would never get it again. * * * * * They had finished the run down Reyburn hill. Their pace was slackening on the level. He said, "That's a jolly bicycle of yours." "Isn't it? I'm sure you'll like to know I bought it with the wonderful cheque you gave me. I should never have had it without that." "I'm glad you got something out of that awful time." "Awful? It was one of the nicest times I've ever had.... Nearly all my nice times have been in that house." "I know," he said. "My uncle would let you do anything you liked if you were young enough. He ought to have had children of his own. They'd have kept him out of mischief." "I can't think," she said to the surrounding hills, "why people get into mischief, or why they go and kill themselves. When they can ride bicycles instead." III. Mamma was sitting upright and averted, with an air of self-conscious effacement, holding the thin white book before her like a fan. Every now and then you could see her face swinging round from behind the cover and her eyes looking at Richard Nicholson, above the rims of her glasses. Uneasy, frightened eyes. IV. The big pink roses of the chintzes and the gold bordered bowls of the black mirrors looked at you rememberingly.