“What is it, Sally?” breathed Eve, tapping her green-clad knee. Clothes and furniture and pictures ... houses full of things and people talking in the houses and having meals and pretending, talking and smiling and pretending. “It’s mother.” “What on earth do you mean, Sarah?” said Miriam angrily. “She’s ill. Bennett took her to a specialist. There’s got to be--she’s got to have an operation.” Miriam drew up the blind with a noisy rattle, smiling at Eve frowning impatiently at the noise. Driving the heavy sash up as far as it would go, she leaned her head against the open frame. The garden did not seem to be there. The tepid night air was like a wall, a black wall. For a moment a splintered red light, like the light that comes from a violent blow on the forehead, flashed along it. Sarah and Eve were talking in strange voices, interrupting each other. It would be a relief to do something, faint or something selfish. But she must hear what they were saying; listen to both the voices cutting through the air of the hot room. Propped weak-limbed against the window open-mouthed for air she forced herself to hear, pressing her cold hands closely together. The gas light that had seemed so bright hardly seemed to light the room at all. Everything looked small, even Grannie’s old Chippendale bedstead and the double-fronted wardrobe. The girls were little monkey ghosts babbling together beside Eve’s open trunk. Did they see that it was exactly like a grave? 9 The sun shone through the apple trees, making the small half-ripe apples look as though they were coated with enamel.