Her music held them all, protecting the wordless meeting. Her last night’s extremity of content was reality, being lived by all three of them. It centred in herself. Ted stood within it, happy in it. The friend watched, witnessing Ted’s confession. Ted had said nothing to him about her, about any of them, in his usual way. But he was disguising nothing now that he had come. At the end of her playing she stood up faintly dizzy, and held out towards Max Sonnenheim’s familiar strangeness hands heavy with happiness and quickened with the sense of Ted’s touch upon her arm. The swift crushing of the strange hands upon her own, steadied her as the curtains swung wide and a group of dancers crowded in. 17 “Don’t tell N.B. we’ve scrubbed the coffin, Miriorama--she’ll sit there all the evening.” “That was my sister and my future brother-in-law,” said Miriam to Max Sonnenheim as Harriett and Gerald ran down the steps and out into the dark garden. “Your sister and brother-in-law,” he responded thoughtfully. He was standing at her side at the top of the garden steps staring out into the garden and apparently not noticing the noisy passers-by. If they stood there much longer, Ted, who had not been dancing, would join them. She did not want that. She would put off her dance with Ted until later. The next dance she would play herself and then perhaps dance again with Max. Once more from the strange security of his strongly swinging arms she would meet Ted’s eyes, watching and waiting. She must dance once more with Max. She had never really danced before. She would go to Ted at last and pass on the spirit of her dancing to him. But not yet. “I will show you the front garden,” she said, running down the steps. He joined her and they walked silently round the side of the house, through the kitchen yard and out into the deserted carriage drive. She thought she saw people on the front lawn and walked quickly, humming a little tune, on down the drive. Max crunched silently along a little apart from her, singing to himself. 18 Both sides of the front gate were bolted back and their footsteps carried them straight out on to the asphalted avenue extending right and left, a dim tunnel of greenery, scarcely lit by the lamps out in the roadway. With a sudden sense of daring, Miriam determined to assume the deserted avenue as part of the garden. The gate left behind, they made their way slowly along the high leafy tunnel.