She was a goldy brown person, not cold grey. With half a chance, goldy brown and rose. And the whites of her eyes were pearly grey-blue. What a number of strange live colours, warmly asserting themselves; independently. But only at close quarters. * * * * * She followed Alma back through the swing door. Alma hummed a little song; an overture; its low tones filled the enclosed space, opened all the doors, showed her the whole of the interior in one moment and the coming month in an endless bright panorama passing unbroken from room to room, each scene enriched by those accumulated behind it, and those waiting ahead; the whole, for her, perpetually returning upon its own perfection. Alma paused before a scatter of letters on the table below the long lattice. Links with their other world; with things she would hear of, stated and shaped in their way, revealing a world to which they alone seemed to have an interpreting key; making it hold together; but inacceptable ... but the _statement_ was forever fascinating.... Through the leaded panes she caught a glimpse of the upper slope of the little town. A row of grey seaside boarding-houses slanting up-hill. A ramshackle little omnibus rumbling down the steep road. "Edna Prout's with us for the week-end." Alma's social tone, deliberately clear and level. It made a little scene, the beginning of a novel, the opening of a play, warning the players to stand off and make a good shape, smoothly moving without pause or hitch, playing and saying their parts, always with an eye to the good shape, conscious of a critical audience. There would be no expansive bright beginning, alone with Alma and Hypo, the centre of their attention. "Who is Edna Prout?" she demanded jealously. Alma turned with a little bundle of the letters in her hand, speaking thoughtfully away through the window. "She writes; rather wonderful stuff." Away outside the window stood the wonderful stuff, being written, rolled off; the vague figure of a woman, cleverly dressed, rising pen in hand from her work to be socially brilliant. Popular. Divided between mysteriously clever work and successful femineity. Alma glanced, pausing, and looked away again. "She has a most amazing sense of the past," she murmured reflectively. As if it had just occurred to her. But it must be the current description. His description. "The Stone Age?" "Oh _no_, my dear!" She shrieked gently; wheeling round to share her mirth. "The Past. _'Istry._ The Mediterranean past." "Her stones are precious stones." From this beginning, to go on looking only at things, ignoring surroundings.... "That's it! Come along!" Alma went blithely forward, again humming her tune. But there was a faint change in her confident manner. She too, was conscious of going to meet an ordeal.