with a red face and bang down a plate of melon.... What did God do
about people like Sarah? Perhaps Apollyon could be made to come at
once--sweeping in like a large bat--be torn to bits--those men at that
college said he had come to them. They swore--one after the other and
the devil came in through one of the carved windows and carried one
of them away.... I have my doubts... Pater's face laughing--I have my
doubts, ooof--P-ooof. She flung off the outer covering and felt the
strong movements of her limbs. Hang! Hang! _Hang!_ DAMN....

If there's no God, there's no Devil... and everything goes on....
Fraulein goes on having her school.... What does she really think?.
.. Out in the world people don't think.... They grimace.... Is there
anywhere where there are no people?... be a gipsy.... There are always
people....

8

"What a perfect morning... what a perfect morning," Miriam kept telling
herself, trying to see into the garden. There was a bowl of irises on
the breakfast-table--it made everything seem strange. There had never
been flowers on the table before. There was also a great dish of
pumpernickel besides the usual food. Fraulein had enjoined silence. The
silence made the impression of the irises stay. She hoped it might be
a new rule. She glanced at Fraulein two or three times. She was pallid
white. Her face looked thinner than usual and her eyes larger and
keener. She did not seem to notice anyone. Miriam wondered whether she
were thinking about cancer. Her face looked as it had done when once or
twice she had said, "Ich bin so bange vor Krebs." She hoped not. Perhaps
it was the problem of evil. Perhaps she had thought of it when she put
the irises on the table.

She gazed at them, half-feeling the flummery petals against the palm
of her hand. Fraulein seemed cancelled. There was no need to feel
self-conscious. She was not thinking of any of them. Miriam found
herself looking at high grey stone basins with ornamental stems like
wine-glasses and large square fluted pedestals, filled with geraniums
and calceolarias. They had stood in the sunshine at the corners of the
lawn in her grandmother's garden. She could remember nothing else but
the scent of a greenhouse and its steamy panes over her head... lemon
thyme and scented geranium.

How lovely it would be to-day at the end of the day. Fraulein would feel
happy then... or did elderly people fear cancer all the time.... It
was a great mistake. You shoul