After lunch they set out, carrying baskets and a small tin pail, and walking in single file, Charles in the lead, then Sally in her blue jeans, shirttails tucked in (was this a gesture of conciliation?), and finally Violet wearing a large straw hat, for her delicate skin could not stand the sun. They passed into the chill green gloom just behind the house; the empty stables where nettles, monstrously healthy, grew right up between the shafts of an old cart. They passed into the hot sunlight reflected off the brick wall of the garden, then through a glade of small trees to the shallow brown brook. Charles splashed through it happily. Sally, who had been whistling La Vie en Rose, stopped short. She had been dreamily contented, contented to be a passive member of the trio, to go wherever Uncle Charles led and for once not to think, even about Ian.

But she could not wade in her brogues. They would be ruined. Once again she was the stranger, who broke the rhythm, this time in spite of herself. Aunt Violet, just behind her, did not understand her hesitation.

“It’s my shoes,” she explained. “I’ll have to take them off.”

Sitting down, she watched Aunt Violet wade unconcernedly through the shallow brown water, flowing swiftly over flat stones. “I’ll catch up!” she called. She felt hot and uncomfortable. These people seemed entirely adapted to their surroundings, wearing shoes which water did not hurt, for instance. She got up clumsily, balancing her pail in one hand and her shoes and socks in the other, and almost fell as her foot slipped on a stone. Then she was safely across, wrenching the socks over her wet feet.

Uncle Charles and Aunt Violet were far ahead now and she ran to catch up. It was a little thing, this awkwardness of a moment, yet it had spoiled her sense of comfort and pleasure. She felt subtly put in the wrong. This would have been a satisfaction even two days ago; now, since Ian’s letter, it bothered her. For his letter instead of bringing him closer had, in a queer way, set her adrift. Now she was, she felt, entirely alone. So she ran desperately to catch up, as if she could find some mooring when she reached the two figures, walking so steadily off into the sunlight.

They were emerging into open fields, and the full blaze beat down. The soft turf was full of holes where the cows had stood and Sally stumbled several times, annoyed by her awkwardness. Did “they” never stumble? When they had come out in the third pasture, Aunt Violet turned.

“Here we are!” Then noticing her niece’s flushed face, “Don’t hurry, child. It’s far too hot.”

Sally came to a halt by her aunt, panting, brushing the gnats out of her eyes, and for the first time looked around. The house was out of sight. They were entirely surrounded by fields, broken up by rather scraggly hedges, tall enough to close in the view. They could not see anything near-by except their own green enclosure, but, off in the distance, the deep purple humps of the hills seemed much closer than they did from the house. High up in the sky there was a continual twittering.

“Larks,” Aunt Violet said, watching Sally’s frown, obviously puzzled because she could not see the bird in the blue above them.

The glare made Sally’s eyes hurt. She could feel the sweat down her back and the shirt clinging to her shoulders. She did not look at Aunt Violet because she was quite sure that her aunt must look cool and delightful and perfectly at home in these surroundings, as she did everywhere. She looked down instead, grateful for the tuft of buttercups, one thing at least which she did recognize and could name.

“Buttercups,” she said, pleased.

“There are masses of berries,” Uncle Charles shouted. He was already systematically at work, on his knees. “Come on and get to work, you lazy women!”

For a half-hour they picked with silent, sleepy concentration. Very slowly Sally lost her sense of awkwardness and began to enjoy trying to outpick Uncle Charles; they were at opposite sides of a patch, moving towards each other. Aunt Violet had started at the far end of the field, by herself. Every now and then Sally straightened up, lit a cigarette, stretched and gave herself the secret pleasure of looking at her aunt. The large straw hat, floppy, tied under her chin with a pale blue scarf, gave her a charmingly old-fashioned look. She was, Sally decided, far away somewhere in the past, in a time, she thought with a pang, when I wasn’t even born. She was wholly absorbed like a child, not to be touched. And this impression of Sally’s was quite true, for picking wild strawberries was such a summer tradition of the house that Aunt Violet was dreamily half-consciously re-enacting innumerable summers, listening to the change of note as the little berries first slowly covered the bottom of the empty basket and then plopped down on each other silently as the second layer began.

The air seemed full of birds. Every hedge broke into song, first one and then another; small birds swooped out and chattered, and always overhead there was the high sweet twittering of the invisible larks.

“Charles, your patch is much better than mine!” Sally watched his big hand gather in what looked like dozens of little strawberries in one quick skilful gesture.

“It’s all in the game,” he answered without looking up. And she felt how it was a game and Charles would take games seriously and have to win. She had cared about winning at first, glad to have this definite thing to do, but now she did not care at all. A kind of ease welled up inside her. She recognized it as The Spell. In a moment, if she did not take care, she would be happy, she would belong.…

Whenever this happened, she knew she must attack, show to herself and to them that she was not in any way a real part of life here. At college she had revolted in the same way against Miss Park’s brilliant lectures on sociology, against the atmosphere at Vassar of teaching responsibility, of teaching usefulness. She had revolted because she was in love with Ian who had nothing to do with all this, and about whom she had always a vague sense of guilt. She had reached outside her own world to find her love, and that had made it all the more inviolable, secret, and hers. Now as she looked for an arm against the spell of the sun and the strawberries and Charles’s intent self beside her, Miss Park’s lectures came to her aid.

“It’s all very well,” she said in such a loud and argumentative tone that Charles stopped picking.

“What’s all very well?” he asked, startled again by the fierceness of her gaze, so out of place.

“All this,” she looked around with a slightly remote, an indulgent air, looked down at Aunt Violet, looked off to the humped purple hills. “But what does it all mean?”

Charles was puzzled. For the first time he noticed that the sun was very hot on the top of his head, and that his knees were very stiff indeed.

“You know,” he said, panting a little as he straightened up, “we’d better sit down in the shade for a bit, call a break, what?”

He stretched himself out comfortably under the hedge and Sally sat down beside him, the cigarette hanging out of her mouth in a way he particularly disliked.

“Come and rest, Aunt Violet!” she called without taking the cigarette out of her mouth.

“No thanks.” Violet didn’t lift her head. She was much too involved in this moment to walk all that way, and besides she did not want to talk. The afternoon had taken on the color of eternity, as her afternoons as a child had done. It was a whole piece of time without beginning or end, going back as far as memory did, enclosing her like a dream. She was happy.

“Now what on earth are you getting at?” Charles asked, carefully tamping the tobacco down in his pipe. Sally found herself always watching his neat way of doing things, as if one could read in the way he folded up his tobacco pouch the very essence of the man.

“Well”—she forced herself to make the point—“I mean this life here. It flows along. You go out with Cammaert. Aunt Violet does the flowers. There is the house always to be thinking of—but what does it all mean?” she said almost crossly, because it was an effort to say it at all.

“You know,” he lounged comfortably beside her, not at all disturbed, “I’ve never asked myself that question. You see, I was forced to retire rather younger than is usual by the Burma business—and well—here we are.” He looked over at her with a kindly half-amused look, as if she were a child, Sally thought.

“What does the house mean then? What is it all about, this tradition, this big house set down in the midst of the country? Surely the life such things represent doesn’t exist any more? Does it?” The more she tried to pin down what had been in her mind, the more baffled she felt. Miss Park and Vassar seemed infinitely remote, though she begged them inwardly to come to her aid. “You said yourself you didn’t much like it.” She was ashamed of herself for this lapse into what Miss Park would call an Ad Hominem argument.

“Did I?” Charles sat up, indignant. “Whenever did I say that?”

“Oh,” Sally pulled up a piece of grass and looked at it, “the other day when we were walking down the drive. You said not to tell Violet.”

The antagonism he felt excited Charles. For someone so young Sally had an amazing power of disconcerting him, and he jabbed back like a very young man.

“What about your fiance? What’s going to be the meaning of your life and his, eh?” He said it sharply as one parries a real thrust.

“I hate you.” Sally turned her face away to hide the tears which she would not, would not allow to fall, and tearing up another tuft of grass, “You’re mean.”

“You’ve got to take as good as you give.”

There was now a silence. If Sally had wanted to break the spell, she had succeeded beautifully. Her fists were clenched in her pockets. She would have liked to hit Charles.

“I love him,” she said through the tears which now would not be forced back. “Leave me alone.”

Charles was not a man whom tears irritated. Violet never cried; he had little experience of tears, and he was very much upset now. He reached over to put his hand on the small tear-stained fist. “You do make it hard for us, you know—”

“I know,” she was sobbing now, great ugly sobs, “I can’t h—h—help it.”

When Violet looked up she saw a blur which seemed to be Charles and Sally embracing. The eternity of the afternoon split open to exactly half past three, for for some reason she looked at her watch. She became exactly fifty-two years old, and the sharpness of her suffering exactly matched the happiness she had experienced a moment before. But it’s not possible, she thought, wishing for once that she did wear glasses.

A few seconds later she realized that Sally was in tears and that Charles had been comforting her, that was all. But the initial shock had been too great and she could not get it out of her consciousness like some vivid dream which colors the whole of a day, and even affects one’s attitude to people who have appeared in it quite unlike their real selves.

“It’s really too hot,” she said, coming up to where they sat. “We’d better get back to the house.” She was annoyed with herself for feeling embarrassed.

“Come along, old girl.” Charles got up with amazing lightness and pulled Sally to her feet by her two wrists, then turned to Violet and met her clear gaze unabashed. “We’ve done rather well as a matter of fact,” he said. Violet saw that he meant the strawberries, as he held out the two pails.

“Look!” She showed her nearly full basket and triumphed.

The procession formed itself again, Charles taking the lead, Violet following him, and Sally, disheveled, ashamed of herself, straggling behind, a cigarette hanging from her lips. Because she had cried, Charles would feel he had some real relationship with her now. Especially as she had to admit that it had been a comfort to lean against his shoulder, an immense comfort. This, she knew, was even more dangerous. For she could handle what he might think of her, she could withdraw. But she could not handle what she might feel herself. She had not said what she meant about the house. It had sprung out of a desire to attack, to break the spell, but now she felt it had been after all a real question, a major question. She was walking slowly, absorbed in these thoughts, looking down at the grass and the buttercups. She hardly noticed how far behind she was. When she lifted her head she saw Uncle Charles and Aunt Violet now from a great distance as if they were children, sauntering along, absorbed in the pleasures of the moment, impervious to imminent war, to the fall of empires, as children are, entirely enclosed in their private life, it seemed. What did Charles think about Burma? Had he been angry when he was driven out, or only sad because the teak, as he had explained to her, was a complicated business and the Burmese did not have the trained people to take over? Was he really as detached, as magnanimous as he seemed?

Uncle Charles took the basket from his wife’s arm. They feel nothing passionately except themselves, Sally decided. They have no convictions. They are useless people like the people in Chekhov, she decided, relieved to have defined them and so, in a sense, got rid of them as presences who had the power of putting her in the wrong continually, of treating her as a wayward child.

At least Ian earns his living—part of the time, she thought, walking quickly now, her head high. Yes, she thought, Ian earns as much as five hundred a week when he has a job. Yes.

She caught up with them, just as they had crossed the stream, and turned to wait for her. Sally stood looking across as if what flowed between them here was more than the shallow brook, time itself, a wholly different vision of life, and there could be no crossing over. Charles wondered why she was standing there like a little stubborn foal, staring as if she saw something she might shy at.

“Come along,” he said, “and be careful of the stones—they’re slippery,” for he was still feeling solicitous.

Obediently, for it did not matter, she sat down and took off her shoes and socks, this time without hurrying, as if she were in command. How different from her clumsiness and panic on the way over! She rolled her socks neatly into her shoes, held them in one hand by the strings and her pail in the other. She felt graceful and at ease and enjoyed the delicious coolness of the water flowing over her bare feet.

She would have liked to stay there and paddle about, and with something of this in her mind, perhaps to tell them to go along, she lifted her head. It happened that her eyes met Aunt Violet’s and for the second time the clear blue gaze touched her, reached down to the most secret part of herself.

This time Violet knew very well what she was doing. She was looking, with a sense of Sally’s reality as a person and not just a child, and judging her as one judges a real antagonist. It was a powerful collision.

And then, as if they had been playing that game where the players lock hands and try to throw each other off balance, the locked glance slipped as Sally grasped wildly into the air and fell plunk into the water, the pail of strawberries emptied out and bobbing away. It took Charles half a second to run in and lift her out, still clinging to her shoes which she had managed to keep clear of the water.

“You do fall down rather a lot,” Charles said, smiling broadly at the dripping little figure which looked so angrily and fiercely at him.

“Don’t tease her, Charles.” Violet could afford to be magnanimous.

“As long as I did fall you should have let me enjoy lying in the brook. It felt lovely,” Sally said harshly. “You would come and pull me out. You would have to do that.” She ran off down the path ahead of them in her bare feet, the shoes bobbing up and down clumsily in her hand.

When they got back to the house, Sally had disappeared. There was no sound, Violet noticed, as she stopped on the landing wondering if she could go up to Sally’s room, and deciding against it. Charles had been rather miffed at being treated so roughly.

She felt tired as if she were on the brink of a journey she did not want at all to make. Or was it only the journey back into the angular present from the gentle flow of the past? She felt without reasoning that the afternoon had had an imminent quality, like one of those immensely placid summer days that are called weather breeders.

And then she remembered that some nice dull acquaintances from a domain twenty miles away were coming to tea. It would be a good thing, perhaps, if Sally for once conformed and changed into a dress. Later she would go up and tell her so. Later, not now. Now she would lie down on the great bed and close her eyes, and not think of anything. But is there a cake? Violet thought, slipping into a dressing gown.