XV
A TOUCH OF SPRING
[To W.Y. Turner]
The sun was streaming through the curtains silhouetting a strange bloated pattern on the chintz, breaking through an opening and cutting a deep yellow slit in the carpet. She lay in bed subconsciously awake, subconsciously asleep, her thoughts drifting into dreams, her limbs merging into one another. "This is happiness," she murmured to herself, and feeling consciousness invade her, she clutched at the perfect moment, and it was gone.
Smiling at her defeat she stretched herself luxuriously like a cat and poked her toes out into a cool expanse of sheet.
"It is nice," she thought, "to have the whole bed to myself."
She curled herself up and lay for a few moments watching the sun catching little patches of air and turning them into rainbow dust. Then she rang. Her maid let in such a flood of light that she was forced to shade her eyes. An unabashed cuckoo broke into the chorus of birds, glorying in being a solo part and despising them for mixing and intertwining their notes.
She got out of bed and her bare feet sank into the warm furry rug; without putting on her slippers she walked across the room, stepping like a child into the puddles of sunshine on the carpet. Leaning out of the window the air pierced through her transparent nightgown—a tingling quality underlying a faint veil of warmth. Everywhere mist and dew lay on the countryside like the bloom on a grape. The gardener's boy walking across the lawn had left his footprints stamped in emerald on the grass.