Strolling to join her Miriam saw her as she had been last night, set like a flower, unaccented and harmonious, in her pleated gown of old rose silk, towards the oval of dinner-table, an island of softly bright silk-shaded radiance in the midst of the twilit room; under the brightest of the central light, filmy flowers massed low in a wide shallow bowl ... a gentleness about her, touching the easy beginnings of talk, each phrase pearly, catching the light, expanding; expressing a secret joy. Then the gathering and settling of the flow of talk between him and her, lifting, shaking itself out, flashing into sharp clear light; the fabric of words pierced by his wails of amusement as he looked, still talking, at the pictures they drew.... People they knew passing to and fro; _all_ laughable, all brought to their strange shared judgment. The charm of the scene destroyed by the surrounding vision of a wit-wrecked world. After dinner that moment when she had drawn herself up before him, suddenly young, with radiant eyes; looking like a flower in her petaled gown. He had responded standing very upright, smiling back at her, admiring her deliberate effect.... The break away across the landing, white and green night brightness under the switched-on lights, into the dusk of the study, ready peopled with its own stillness; the last of the twilight glimmering outside the open windows. Each figure changed by the gloom into an invisible, memorable presence. Hypo moving in and out of the cone of soft light amongst the shadows at the far end. "We'll try the contralto laugh on the lady in the window-seat." The fear of missing the music in looking for his discovery. And then into the waiting stillness _Bach_. Of all people. He found a contralto laugh in _Bach_. There were no people, no women, in Bach. Looking for the phrase. Forgetting to look for it. The feeling of the twilight expanding within itself, too small. The on-coming vast of night held back, swirling, swept away by broad bright morning light running through forest tracery. Shining into a house. The clean cool poise of everyday morning. The sounds of work and voices, separate, united by surroundings greeted by everyone from within. The secret joy in everyone pouring through the close pattern of life, going on forever, the end in the first small phrase, every phrase a fresh end and a beginning. Going on when the last chord stood still on the air.... And if he liked Bach, how not believe in people? How not be certain of God?... And then remarks, breaking thinly against the vast nearness. "What does the lady in the window think?" "She's asleep." Miss Prout had really thought that.... "Oh no she _isn't_."