“Poor darlings, there’s not much left of them now. _If Shakespeare was here I should feel the same way. Speechless. Why, he’s like a god: lovely to think about, impossible to talk to. He doesn’t give anything, just absorbs you: you feel like a drop of ink on a blotter._ I have a horrid suspicion that the ice has given out, you mustn’t mind if your cocktail is warm.” He kept looking at her in brief glances. Each time she met them it was like getting a letter in some familiar handwriting but stamped with a strange postmark. “Are they better cold?” _I give up, I give up. It’s no use. I can’t even think. There’s some sort of veil, mist, between us. He_ is _a kind of god. He’s brightness, beauty. Every movement he makes is a revelation and a question. How can I speak to him when all I want is to love him. There’s nothing earthy, nothing gross about this. It’s lovelier than anything I ever dreamed of. And if I tried to tell any one it would sound like tawdry farce...._ Dimly she divined what lay between them, what always lies between men and gods, making them such embarrassed companions--the whole of life, the actual functions of living; the sense of absurdity (enemy of all tender beauty); trained necessities for silence, that darken the intuitions of the soul. _It’s as impossible as--as the New Testament. I feel like Christmas Eve: there’s a new Me being born. You can’t have a Nativity without pangs. And not even any one to bring me frankincense and myrrh...._ She stopped, picked one of the late rosebuds, and put it in his lapel. She checked a frightened impulse to tell him that she named the baby Rose because it was her favourite flower and she looked so like a rosebud when she was born. This was courage, because to say it would have carried on the doomed conversation one paragraph farther in safety. To any one else she would have said it. But now she spoke shakenly, from far within. “You’re not easy to talk to--Martin.” His face changed, he looked less anxious. He took her hand. She found herself not surprised: it seemed entirely natural. She felt his fingers lace into hers. Just as Janet does, she thought. “I get frightened when people talk to me,” he said.