darkness, keen, savoury scent of the downs, touched with honey-suckle and gorse and bracken scent.
Helena turned to him, leaning her hand on his thigh.
“What day is it, Siegmund?” she asked, in a joyous, wondering tone. He laughed, understanding, and kissed her.
“But really,” she insisted, “I would not have believed the labels could have fallen off everything like this.”
He laughed again. She still leaned towards him, her weight on her hand stopping the flow in the artery down his thigh.
“The days used to walk in procession like seven marionettes, each in order and costume, going endlessly round.” She laughed, amused at the idea.
“It is very strange,” she continued, “to have the days and nights smeared into one piece, as if the clock-hand only went round once in a lifetime.”
“That is how it is,” he admitted, touched by her eloquence. “You have torn the labels off things, and they all are so different. This morning! It does seem absurd to talk about this morning. Why should I be parcelled up into mornings and evenings and nights? I am not made up of sections of time. Now, nights and days go racing over us like cloud-shadows and sunshine over the sea, and all the time we take no notice.”
She put her arms round his neck. He was reminded by a sudden pain in his leg how much her hand had been pressing on him. He held his breath from pain. She was kissing him softly over his eyes. They lay cheek to cheek, looking at the stars. He felt a peculiar
