As the waiter finished clattering down a circle of cups and saucers in front of Fräulein, the unseen iron hands dropped tenderly into the central melody of the waltz. The notes no longer bounded and leaped but went dreaming along in an even slow swinging movement. It seemed to Miriam that the sound of a far-off sea was in them, and the wind and the movement of distant trees and the shedding and pouring of far-away moonlight. One by one, delicately and quietly the young men's voices dropped in, and the sea and the wind and the trees and the pouring moonlight came near. When the music ceased Miriam hoped she had not been gazing at the window. It frightened and disgusted her to see that all the girls seemed to be sitting up and ... being bright ... affected. She could hardly believe it. She flushed with shame.... Fast, horrid ... perfect strangers ... it was terrible ... it spoilt everything. Sitting up like that and grimacing.... It was different for Gertrude. How happy Gertrude must be. She was sitting with her elbows on the table laughing out across the table about something.... Millie was not being horrid. She looked just as usual, pudgy and babyish and surprised and half resentful ... it was her eyebrows. Miriam began looking at eyebrows. There was a sudden silence all round the table. Standing at Fräulein's side was a young student holding his peaked cap in his hand and bowing with downcast eyes. Above his pallid scarred face his hair stood upright. He bowed at the end of each phrase. Miriam's heart bounded in anticipation. Would Fräulein let them dance after tea, on the grass? But Fräulein with many smiles and kind words denied the young man's formally repeated pleadings. They finished tea to the strains of a funeral march. 2 They were driving swiftly along through the twilight. The warm scents of the woods stood across the roadway. They breathed them in. Sitting at the forward end of the brake, Miriam could turn and see the shining of the road and the edges of the high woods.