and there were maps, green-baize boards, and rows of shoes on a shelf.’
‘Bells rang punctually,’ said Susan, ‘maids scuffled and giggled. There was a drawing in of chairs and a drawing out of chairs on the linoleum. But from one attic there was a blue view, a distant view of a field unstained by the corruption of this regimented, unreal existence.’
‘Down from our heads veils fell,’ said Rhoda. ‘We clasped the flowers with their green leaves rustling in garlands.’
‘We changed, we became unrecognizable,’ said Louis. ‘Exposed to all these different lights, what we had in us (for we are all so different) came intermittently, in violent patches, spaced by blank voids, to the surface as if some acid had dropped unequally on the plate. I was this, Neville that, Rhoda different again, and Bernard too.’
‘Then canoes slipped through palely tinted yellow branches,’ said Neville, ‘and Bernard, advancing in his casual way against breadths of green, against houses of very ancient foundation, tumbled in a heap on the ground beside me. In an access of emotion — winds are not more raving, nor lightning more sudden — I took my poem, I flung my poem, I slammed the door behind me.’
‘I, however,’ said Louis, ‘losing sight of you, sat in my office and tore the date from the calendar, and announced to the world of ship-brokers, corn-chandlers and actuaries that Friday the tenth, or Tuesday the eighteenth, had dawned on the city of London.’
‘Then,’ said Jinny, ‘Rhoda and I, exposed in bright dresses, with a few precious stones nestling on a cold ring round our throats, bowed, shook hands and took a sandwich from a plate with a smile.’
‘The tiger leapt, and the swallow dipped her wings in dark pools on the other side of the world,’ said Rhoda.
‘But here and now we are together,’ said Bernard. ‘We have come together, at a particular time, to this particular spot. We are drawn into this communion by some deep, some
