and elms and firs the
young day flickered gold, so that the bluebell patches were half lit,
like blue water in the sun, half grey, like water at twilight. Between
two great waves of them a brown path ran steeply down to a deep little
stream. Neville and Esau, scrambling a little way upstream, stopped at
a broad swirling pool it made between rocks. Here Neville removed coat,
shoes and pyjamas and sat poised for a moment on the jutting rock, a
slight and naked body, long in the leg, finely and supplely knit, with
light, flexible muscles--a body built for swiftness, grace and a certain
wiry strength. She sat there while she twisted her black plait round her
head, then she slipped into the cold, clear, swirling pool, which in one
part was just over her depth, and called to Esau to come in too, and
Esau, as usual, didn't, but only barked.

One swim round is enough, if not too much, as everyone who knows sunrise
bathing will agree. Neville scrambled out, discovered that she had
forgotten the towel, dried herself on her coat, resumed her pyjamas, and
sat down to eat her second slice of bread and marmalade. When she had
finished it she climbed a beech tree, swarming neatly up the smooth trunk
in order to get into the sunshine, and sat on a broad branch astride,
whistling shrilly, trying to catch the tune now from one bird, now from
another.

These, of course, were the moments when being alive was enough. Swimming,
bread and marmalade, sitting high in a beech tree in the golden eye of
the morning sun--that was life. One flew then, like a gay ship with the
wind in its sails, over the cold black bottomless waters of misgiving.
Many such a June morning Neville remembered in the past.... She wondered
if Gerda and if Kay thus sailed over sorrow, too. Rodney, she knew, did.
But she knew Rodney better, in some ways, than she knew Gerda and Kay.

To think suddenly of Rodney, of Gerda and of Kay, sleeping in the still
house beyond the singing wood and silver garden, was to founder swiftly
in the cold, dark seas, to be hurt again with the stabbing envy of the
night. Not jealousy, for she loved them all too well for that. But envy
of their chances, of their contacts with life. Having her own contacts,
she wanted all kinds of others too. Not only Rodney's, Gerda's and Kay's,
but those of all her family and friends. Conscious, as one is on
birthdays, of intense life hurrying swiftly to annihilation, she strove
desperately to dam it. It wen