“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....
There was no feeling of Sunday in the house. But when Miriam wandered into her room during the after breakfast lull, she found it waiting for her; pouring into the room from afar, from all over the world, breaking her march, breaking up the lines of the past and of the future, isolating her with itself. The openings of the long lattice framed wide strips of morning brilliance between short close-drawn folds of flowered chintz. Everything outside was sharp and near, but changed since yesterday. The flowers stood vivid in the sunlight; very still. The humming of the bees sounded careful and secret; not wishing to disturb. The sea sparkled to itself, refusing to call the eye. Yet outside there, as in the room, something called. She leaned out. Into the enlarged picture the sky poured down. The pure blue moved within itself as you looked, letting you through and up. An unbroken fabric of light, yet opening all over, taking you up into endless light....
Sunday is in the sky....
Hypo, coming round the corner from the terrace, his arms threshing the air to the beat of his swift walk; knitting up the moment, casting kind radiance as he came. Married, but casting radiance. He was making for the house. Then Miss Prout was somewhere down there alone.... She hurried to be out, seeking her. On the landing she ran into Hypo.
“Hullo, Miriametta. Going out?”
“I think so. Where’s everybody?”
“Everybody, and chairs, is down on the terrace. But you’ll want a hat.”