e sitting in and its rocking-chairs and marble
and rugs, Anna-Felicitas was suddenly smitten by her idea.

It fell upon her like a blow. It struck her fairly, as it were, between
the eyes. She wasn't used to ideas, and she stopped dead in the middle
of a piece of toast and looked at the others. They stopped too in their
eating and looked at her.

"What's the matter?" asked Anna-Rose. "Has another button come off?"

At this Mr. Twist considered it wisest to turn his head away, for
experience had taught him that Anna-Felicitas easily came undone.

"I've thought of something," said Anna-Felicitas.

Mr. Twist turned his head back again. "You don't say," he said, mildly
sarcastic.

"_Ich gratuliere_," said Anna-Rose, also mildly sarcastic.

"I've got an idea," said Anna-Felicitas. "But it's so luminous," she
said, looking from one to the other in a kind of surprise. "Of course.
That's what we'll do. Ridiculous to waste time bothering about schools."

There was a new expression on her face that silenced the comments rising
to Anna-Rose's and Mr. Twist's tongues, both of whom had tired feet and
were therefore disposed to sarcasm.

Anna-Felicitas looked at them, and they looked at her, and her face
continued to become visibly more and more illuminated, just as if a
curtain were being pulled up. Animation and interest shone in her
usually dreamy eyes. Her drooping body sat up quite straight. She
reminded Anna-Rose, who had a biblically well-furnished mind, of Moses
when he came down from receiving the Law on the mountain.

"Well, tell us," said Anna-Rose. "But not," she added, thinking of
Moses, "if it's only more commandments."

Anna-Felicitas dropped the piece of toast she was still holding in her
fingers, and pushed back her cup. "Come out on to the rocks," she said
getting up--"where we sat this morning." And she marched out, followed
by the other two with the odd submissiveness people show towards any one
who is thoroughly determined.

It was dark and dinner-time before they got back to the hotel.
Throughout the sunset Anna-Felicitas sat on her rock, the same rock she
had sat on so unsatisfactorily eight hours earlier, and expounded her
idea. She couldn't talk fast enough. She, so slow and listless, for once
was shaken into burning activity. She threw off her hat directly she got
on to the sands, climbed up the rock as if it were a pulpit, and with
her hands clasped round her knees poured out her plan, the long