6
Tea was over. Fräulein decided against a walk and they all trooped into the saal. No programme was suggested; they all sat about unoccupied. There was no centre; Fräulein Pfaff was one of them. The little group near her in the shady half of the sunlit summer-house was as quietly easy as those who sat far back in the saal. Miriam had got into a low chair near the saal doors whence she could see across the room through the summer-house window through the gap between the houses across the way to the far-off afternoon country. Its colours gleamed, a soft confusion of tones, under the heat-haze. For a while she sat with her eyes on Fräulein’s thin profile, clean and cool and dry in the intense heat ... “she must be looking out towards the lime-trees.” ... Ulrica sat drooped on a low chair near her knees ... “sweet beautiful head” ... the weight of her soft curved mouth seemed too much for the delicate angles of her face and it drooped faintly, breaking their sharp lines. Miriam wished all the world could see her.... Presently Ulrica raised her head, as Elsa and Clara broke into words and laughter near her, and her drooping lips flattened gently back into their place in the curve of her face. She gazed out through the doorway of the summer-house with her great despairing eyes ... the housekeeper was rather like a Dutch doll ... but that was not it.