Janet and Sylvia were already in the two cots on the balcony; but their eyes were waiting for George, with that look of entreating expectancy worn by those who look upward from bed. In the lustrous garden air crickets were beginning to wheedle. The rickety old porch seemed an alcove of simpleness divided from the absurd tangled emotions of the house. But even here was passion: the little white trousered figures sprang up, their strenuous arms clutched him, their eyes were dark with anxiety. With horror he saw how they appealed to him as omnipotent all-arranging arbiter. Him, the poor futile bungler! They crushed him with the impossible burden of their faith. “Yes, we’ll have the Picnic to-morrow. Now you go to sleep and get a good rest.” “Mother forgot to hear our prayers.” He stood impatient as they lengthily rehearsed, one after the other, their confident innocent petitions. The clear voices chirruped, but he shut their words from his mind, as regardless as God. Would they never finish? To hear these dear meaningless desiderations was too tender a torment. He tried to think of other things--of anything--of the sea; of washing his hands and putting on a clean collar; of the striped brown and silver tie that he intended to wear to-morrow (Joyce had never seen it); and what on earth are we going to do to amuse these people after dinner? “... and Mother and Daddy and all friends kind and dear; and let to-morrow be a nice day for the Picnic....” Poor little devils, he thought; they seem as far away from me as if they were kittens or puppies. People pretend that children are just human beings of a smaller size, but I think they’re something quite different. They live in a world with only three dimensions, a physical world immersed in the moment, a reasonable world, a world without that awful sorcery of a fourth measurement that makes us ill at ease. What is it their world lacks? Is it self-consciousness, is it beauty, is it sex? (Three names for the same thing, perhaps.) Little Sylvia with her full wet eyes, what torments of desire she would arouse some day in some deluded stripling. Strange world of theirs: a world that has no awareness of good and evil; a world merely pretty, whereas ours is beautiful. A world that knows what it wants; whereas we are never quite sure.... He looked at them with amazement. Where did they come from, how did they get there? They were more genuine than himself, they would still be in this incredible life long after he had been shovelled out of it. How soon would they begin to see through the furious pettiness of parents? See that we do everything we punish them for attempting, that we torture them for our own weakness, set their teeth on edge for the taste of our own green grapes?