of paper; now she must go up again for more. The dining table was the single place in the house she could write a letter. If she halted in the bedroom, in a moment Nounou was at the door with endless this that and the other about the children. If she sat down on the porch, Lizzie could see her from the pantry window and would come at once with stentorian palaver. Why couldn't a cook do what she was told, not argue about it? In the little sitting room George had spread out his business papers; anyhow, she couldn't bear him near her when she wanted to write. And in the garden it was too hot. A bumblebee was bumping and grumbling against the pane. If you took a cloth and held him, to put him outdoors, his deep warm hum would rise to a piercing scream of anger. She felt like that. If any one touched her . . .
The bee was fussing up and down the window, the one with red and blue and orange panes. She remembered that window from childhood visits to the Richmonds. When you looked through the orange glass, the purest sky turned a leaden green, dull with menace; the clear northern sunlight became a poisoned tropic glare. And the blue panes made everything a crazy cold moonscape, with strange grape-juice colours underneath the
