Still, the scene on the terrace had sobered them. They had come out, each in his own way, chastened, relieved to find each other sane and simple as after a storm. The next days seemed suspended at the meridian of summer. Never again would the sun be so hot, the grass so sweet-smelling, the trees so fresh and lush, nor the twilights so beautifully long. “Still pond, no more moving,” Sally thought. And indeed they seemed at times like players in a game of Blind Man’s Buff, waiting to be touched by Ian, the only possible It. The intimate music Sally had captured, as she leaned out of the window and looked down at Aunt Violet and Uncle Charles standing in the path, now included her. They were for the first time, able to be silent together—Aunt Violet looking like an angel in a niche in an old basket-chair Charles had found in the cellar; Charles, relaxed after a morning of tramping about, a glass in his hand, occasionally making a remark which no one answered; Sally lying flat on her back on some cushions, looking up dreamily at the darkening sky, at the small motion of the leaves as they stirred just before darkness fell, and the stones of the house warmed in the afterglow. At such times she wished that they could go on a little while just as they were. I shall never be the same again, she thought. What disturbing violent sweetness would Ian bring with him, forcing her back where decisions had to be made, where she must meet huge unknown forces in herself, in him? Sally was afraid. She had been afraid ever since her decision. Almost, she wished she had not made it.

She saw the episode of her attachment to Violet as an episode, a clarification, the revenge of life itself perhaps on her deliberate shutting out and refusal of all experience here, on her having called it and willed it to be a prison. Yet it had changed her. She felt much older and in some ways, more vulnerable. She had had a glimpse of what passion could be. And she wondered how she would meet Ian—would he be the same? Would he blot out everything and take her back with one triumphant kiss? Was he coming because he had at last decided to ask her to marry him? This thought brought Sally to her feet; she stretched and lifted her arms to the sky in a gesture of hope and abandon. Then she sat down again, with a long sigh—the suspense of these days!

Never again, Violet thought, moved by the unconscious wordless hope in Sally’s look and stretch towards the sky; never again would the curve of the hill as it rose and encircled the house seem as gentle, nor the long gold rays of the sun lie across the fields with such extreme beauty. It was the still moment before a major change. From her basket-chair she looked over at Charles (who was still rather distant for he hadn’t quite forgiven her) and thought they had reached a plateau in their marriage. Later they would take life up again, and they would find out how they had changed, but for the moment it was a rest to have no emotional demands made upon her, to sit here quietly and sew with a sense of being both very completely herself and also, in some way, all the women who had sat on this terrace in the late summer evenings.

In this mood she turned to Sally and said, “It was a wonderful thing when your father came here, so many years ago. It was wonderful to see Barbie grow up overnight.”

“Why did he come?” Sally sat up, hugging her knees, while the rooks suddenly rose in the air, then settled again like a noisy sigh in the trees.

“It was an accident really. He was staying with friends and wanted to see the house. So they drove over. He was such a silent guest, I hardly noticed him at first—the house was full up and I had two jealous young men to cope with myself—but Barbie liked him plainly, and soon she got him laughing. You know how funny she can be when she’s in the mood…” Sally nodded solemnly. This was her mother, but it was also in a queer way herself she was hearing about. When Ian came would she too grow up in a night?

“It was extraordinary because Barbie had never liked anyone since her unhappy experience with Philip. She just refused to be interested, so it seemed like a miracle, happening so suddenly—I’ll never forget how she came to my room that night (we had hardly communicated for months) and flung herself down on the bed, kicking off her shoes and said, ‘Oh Violet, will he come back? He’s such a peculiar creature…’”

Violet talked on, borne on the current of happy memories, as if at long last she had come to the point in her journey into the past when she could rest on the happy memories, when she could accept the whole and not be torn apart any longer by the broken parts.

The brilliant last rays of the sun were suddenly gone, and the stone terrace felt cold. And then Violet looked up and saw the tension in Sally’s face, the eyes so wide-open as if she was looking with a sort of cold triumph at the future. What was she thinking of? Her father had been so keen, so distinguished and calm—could Ian meet this figure and stand up against it?

But Sally was thinking with a wave of pride in the past, of almost arrogance, that she and the house waited alone for Ian, who could not possibly imagine what majesty of youth and age, and what judgment would stand on the terrace to greet him, she with the house behind her and its great cold eyes staring out behind hers. This was the image she created to protect herself against her rising fears, her rising weakness and love. For the first time, she thought, I have something. I’m protected.