against fierce powers, sunshine, darkness, gale. Life has flowed through them: clocks have chimed, logs crumbled, stairs creaked under happy feet. These whispers are all they have to treasure: if you leave them alone too long they get morbid, full of sullen fancies. She remembered herself, visiting that house as a child, once seated at this same window, watching others play croquet . . . was it memory, or only the trick of the mind that splits the passing instant and makes one live it twice?
"Come, children!" she called from the window. "Time for your supper."
She went slowly down the stairs. Be calm, be calm, she said to herself; this too will pass; this isn't Shakespeare but only the children's supper time. But the flow of her blood warmed and quickened as water grows hot while you wait with your hand under the bathroom faucet. On the landing, where a shot of sunlight came arrowing through from the sitting-room window, she waited to adjust a slipper. She could hear them on the gravel outside. If he came in now he would find her just so, gilded and silvered like a Christmas card. But their voices remained on the veranda where the children's meal was laid. She could not
