Side by side, his arm about her, he and Phyllis looked down into the cool green refreshment of birdsong and dew. The light was filled with a sense of mist, too thin to be seen, but sunshine was incapable behind it. Filmy air globed them in, as the glimmering soap-bubble spheres a breath of the soap’s perfume. A dream, a fog stained with dim colour, a bubble of glamour, farce, and despair; all the sane comfortable words are no more than wind. One gush of violets rebuts them. Life is too great for those who live it. Purposely they wound and mar it, to bring it to their own tragic dimension. What was Joyce’s word?... Inadequate. Yes, not all the beauty of the world can allay the bitter disproportion. And Time will come to rob us even of this precious grievance, this pang we carry in our dusty knapsack like the marshal’s silver baton. And Time will come and take my lust away.... So learn to live on farce. To savour its venom, like the Eastern King, dose and larger dose, until one can relish and thrive on a diet of acid that would blast the normal heart. Isn’t it this very disproportion that makes the glory? There would be no laughter in a perfect world. Ever after, digesting his secret poison, he would search other faces too for the sign of that healing bane. He felt that Phyllis was about to say something. He erased his mind, to be ready to receive her thought; as one parent holds out arms to take the baby from the other. “I think she’s rather wonderful. I think I could....” Joy and clean gusto, the blessed hilarity of living! Why, it was so divinely simple, if Phyl would care to understand.... “Dearest, if you ... if you only....” The half-tamed leopard stirred and showed a yellow spark. George’s mind, uneasily changing itself, made swift cusping arcs like the tracks of a turning car. Ruth came rustling from the bathroom. She was amazed to see them doing a foxtrot together. “Good-morning!” he said. “Perhaps you didn’t know, this is our wedding day.” “Hurry up,” he whispered to Phyllis. “Grab the bath while you can. I’ll get dressed, I’ll just have time to mend that railing before breakfast.” XXI Joyce had slipped out early. There was something unbearable in the house’s morning stir, its sense of preparation for living in which she would have no part.