quietly
easy as those who sat far back in the saal. Miriam had got into a low
chair near the saal doors whence she could see across the room through
the summer-house window through the gap between the houses across
the way to the far-off afternoon country. Its colours gleamed, a soft
confusion of tones, under the heat-haze. For a while she sat with her
eyes on Fraulein's thin profile, clean and cool and dry in the intense
heat... "she must be looking out towards the lime-trees."... Ulrica sat
drooped on a low chair near her knees... "sweet beautiful head"... the
weight of her soft curved mouth seemed too much for the delicate angles
of her face and it drooped faintly, breaking their sharp lines. Miriam
wished all the world could see her.... Presently Ulrica raised her
head, as Elsa and Clara broke into words and laughter near her, and her
drooping lips flattened gently back into their place in the curve of
her face. She gazed out through the doorway of the summer-house with her
great despairing eyes... the housekeeper was rather like a Dutch doll...
but that was not it.

7

The sun had set. Miriam had found a little thin volume of German poetry
in her pocket. She sat fumbling the leaves. She felt the touch of her
limp straightening hair upon her forehead. It did not matter. Twilight
would soon come, and bed-time. But it must have been beginning to get
like that at tea-time. Perhaps the weather would get even hotter. She
must do something about her hair... if only she could wear it turned
straight back.

There was a stirring in the room; beautiful forms rose and stood and
spoke and moved about. Someone went to the door. It opened gently with
a peaceful sound on to the quiet hall and footsteps ran upstairs. Two
figures going out from the saal passed in front of the two still sitting
quietly grouped in the light of the summer-house. They were challenged
as they passed and turned soft profiles and stood talking. Behind
the voices,--flutings, single notes, broken phrases, long undisturbed
warblings came from the garden.

Clara was at the piano. Tall behind her stood Millie's gracious
shapeless baby-form.

As Millie's voice climbing carefully up and down the even stages of
Solveig's song reached the second verse, Miriam tried to separate the
music from the words. The words were wrong. She half saw a fair woman
with a great crown of plaited hair and very broad shoulders singing the
song in the Hanover concert-roo