nd respected other people's completeness?
One loved being with Lotty. With her one was free, and yet befriended.
Mr. Briggs looked so really nice, too. She thought she might like him
if only he wouldn't so excessively like her.

Scrap felt melancholy. Here she was shut up in her bedroom,
which was stuffy from the afternoon sun that had been pouring into it,
instead of out in the cool garden, and all because of Mr. Briggs.

Intolerably tyranny, she thought, flaring up. She wouldn't
endure it; she would go out all the same; she would run downstairs
while Mr. Wilkins--really that man was a treasure--held Mr. Briggs down
telling him about the oleander, and get out of the house by the front
door, and take cover in the shadows of the zigzag path. Nobody could
see her there; nobody would think of looking for her there.

She snatched up a wrap, for she did not mean to come back for a
long while, perhaps not even to dinner--it would be all Mr. Briggs's
fault if she went dinnerless and hungry--and with another glance out of
the window to see if she were still safe, she stole out and got away to
the sheltering trees of the zigzag path, and there sat down on one of
the seats placed at each bend to assist the upward journey of those who
were breathless.

Ah, this was lovely, thought Scrap with a sigh of relief. How
cool. How good it smelt. She could see the quiet water of the little
harbour through the pine trunks, and the lights coming out in the
houses on the other side, and all round her the green dusk was splashed
by the rose-pink of the gladioluses in the grass and the white of the
crowding daisies.

Ah, this was lovely. So still. Nothing moving--not a leaf, not
a stalk. The only sound was a dog barking, far away somewhere up on
the hills, or when the door of the little restaurant in the piazza
below was opened and there was a burst of voices, silenced again
immediately by the swinging to of the door.

She drew in a deep breath of pleasure. Ah, this was--

Her deep breath was arrested in the middle. What was that?

She leaned forward listening, her body tense.

Footsteps. On the zigzag path. Briggs. Finding her out.

Should she run?

No--the footsteps were coming up, not down. Some one from the
village. Perhaps Angelo, with provisions.

She relaxed again. But the steps were not the steps of Angelo,
that swift and springy youth; they were slow and considered, and they
kept on pausing.

"Some o