a German girl, her face _strahlend mit Freude_--_radiant_ with joy ... but _strahlend_ was more than radiant ... streaming--like sunlight--shafts of sunlight. German women were not self-conscious. They were full of joy and sorrow. Perhaps _happier_ than any other women. Their mountains and woods and villages and towns were beautiful with joy. They did not care what men thought or said. They were happy in their beautiful country in their own way. Germany ... all washed with poetry and music and song. “Freue dich des Lebens.” _Freue ... Freue dich_ ... the words were like the rush of wings ... the flutter of a fresh skirt round happy hurrying feet. 27 “What a melancholy ditty, chick.” Miriam laughed and dropped into the accompaniment of Schubert’s “Ave Maria.” “Listen, mother ... there was a monk who sang this so beautifully in a church that he had to be stopped.” She played through the “Ave Maria” and looked round. Mrs. Henderson was sitting stiffly in a stiff straight chair with her hands twisted in her lap. “Oh bother,” thought Miriam, “she’s feeling hysterical ... and it’s my turn this time. What on earth shall I do?” The word had come up through the years. Sarah had seen “attacks of hysteria....” Was she going to have one now ... laugh and cry and say dreadful things and then be utterly exhausted? Good Lord, how fearful. And what was the good? She “couldn’t help it.” That was why you had to be firm with hysterical people. But there was no need, now. Everything was better. Two of them married; the boys ready to look after everything. It was simply irritating ... and the sun just coming round into the green of the conservatory.... She sat impatient, feeling young and strong and solid with joy on the piano stool. Couldn’t mother see her, sitting there in a sort of blaze of happy strength? She swung impatiently round to the keyboard and glanced at the open album. There was silence in the room. Her heart beat anxiously ... some German printer had printed those notes ... in pain and illness perhaps--but pain and illness in _Germany_, not in this dreadful little room where despair was shut in.... “Comus,” “The Seven Ages of Man,” “The Arctic Regions,” beautiful bindings on the little old inlaid table, things belonging to those sunny beginnings and ending with that awful agonised figure sitting there silent. She cleared her throat and stretched a hand out over the notes of a chord without striking it. Something was gaining on her. Something awful and horrible.