"I shan't understand. I know I shan't. May I really take them away?" "Now don't, Miriam ..." taking his time, keeping her arrested before them, with his held-up minatory finger and mocking friendly smile, "don't under-rate your intelligence." "May I really take them," she flounced, ignoring him; holding herself apart with Miss Prout. The air danced between them sunlit from between branches. A fresh perspective opened. She was to meet her. See her unfold before her eyes in the pages of the book. "Yes, _do_," she smiled, a swift nice look, not scrutinising. "How _alive_ they look; much more alive than a book in its suit of neat binding." "Are we _all_ literary?" "We're all literary," joined his quick voice. She blushed with pleasure. Included; with only those ghastly little reviews. Not mocking. Quite gravely. She beamed her gratitude and turned away blissful. "Is Miriam going?" "I've got to unpack." He wanted an audience, an outsider, for the scene of the reading. Alma had disappeared. "Won't _they_ do all that for you?" "Still I think I'll go.... Addio." She backed along the little pathway watching him seek and find his words, crying each one forth in a thoughtful falsetto, while he turned conversationally towards Miss Prout. The scene was cut off by the bushes, but she could still hear his voice, after the break-down of his Italian into an ironic squeal, going on in charge of it. She sped across the lawn and up on to the open above the unexplored terraces. They could wait. For the moment, unpeopled, they were nothing. They would be the background of further scenes, all threaded by the sound of Hypo's voice, lit by the innumerable things she would hear him say, obliterating the surroundings, making far-off things seem more real.... Mental liveliness _did_ obliterate surroundings, stop their expressiveness. Already the first expressiveness had gone from the garden. She did not want to create it afresh. There was hurry and pressure now in the glances she threw. A wrongness. Something left out. There was something left out, left behind, in his scheme of things. She wandered as far as the horizon row of irises to look out over the sea, chased and pulled back as she went. Until the distant prospect opened and part of the slope of the garden lay at her feet. The light had ripened. The sun no longer towered, but blazed across at her from above the rightmost edge of the picture. Short shadows jutted from the feet of every standing thing. The light was deepening in perfect stillness. Wind and rain had left the world for good. _This_ was her holiday. Everything behind her broke down into irrelevance.... How go back to it.... How not stay and live through the changing of the light in this perfect stillness.... * * * * *