“I shan’t.” He had often admired her ability to go without. He had been talking to Miss Prout for the last half hour and was now abstractedly making a shapely thing of a chance meeting with a stranger.... His words had carried him to the study door. He began inventing his retort, the unfelt shape of words that would carry him on undisturbed, facing the door with his back to her, hand on the doorknob. The end of it would find him within. She cried out at random into the making of his phrase and escaped into the dining-room to the sound of his voice. In the empty dining-room she found again the listening presence of Sunday and hurried to be through it and away at whatever centre had formed down there in the open. Going down the steps and along the paths she entered the movement of the day, the beginning of the sense of tomorrow, that would strengthen with the slow shifting of the sabbath light. Miss Prout came into view round the first bend, a sunlit figure in a tub chair on the grassy level at the end of the terrace. She had no hat. Her dark head was bent over the peak made in her flowing draperies by her crossed knees. She was sewing. Here. In public, serenely, the first thing in the morning.
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.”
Miss Prout looked up as she approached but kept on with her sewing and held her easy silence as she dropped into one of the low chairs. She was working a pattern of bright threads on a small strip of saffron-coloured silk ... looking much older in the blaze of hard light. But far-off, not minding, sitting there as if enthroned, for the morning, placid and matronly and indifferent. The heavenly morning freshness was still here. But the remarks about the day had all been made on the lawn after breakfast.... She admired the close bright work. Miss Prout’s voice came at once, a little eagerly, explaining. She was really keen about her lovely work.