'Well, well — said Emma. She turned the switch and the tape began to purr backwards.

'I TOLD you Hugh said it was good of Felix to be so nice to Ann. said Mildred Finch.

Humphrey laughed. 'Hugh is an ass, he said. 'He has a quite remarkable capacity for not seeing what's under his nose.

Felix Meecham had been in love with Ann, in a gentle resigned gloomy way, for some years.

'Well, I think nobody has seen that, said Mildred. 'Felix himself is like a clam. And you and I, dearest.

'Are sufficiently oyster-like.

'When we want to be. I'm glad the poor things had a little moment together — while you so tactfully kept young Penn out of the way.

Humphrey smiled. He and his wife understood each other very well. Their relation was intimate yet abstract, a frictionless machine which generated little warmth, but which functioned excellently. 'You're not worrying about young Penn, I hope?

'Certainly not, said Mildred. 'I don't think you're quite mad.

'You, after all, were tactfully keeping Hugh out of the way!

'Ah, Hugh — said Mildred. 'Yes, he is an ass, dear slow old Hugh, but I love him. What's more, Humpo, I'm going to have him. Would you mind?

Humphrey looked at his distinguished reflection in an oval gilt mirror and smoothed down his white hair. 'Of course not, my dear.

'You often said you wished I had someone. And I've waited long, enough for Hugh: 'But do you think you will positively get him? Humphrey looked down at his wife, amused and coolly tender. It was evening at Seton Blaise and the big drawing-room was already obscure, the lamps not yet turned on. But the garden was still full of light. A near-by thrush sang.

'I don't see what can stop me, said Mildred. 'I mean to have him, what's more, deliciously all to myself! I've wanted him for years, and that gives me a sort of right, doesn't it? Only he was so infernally faithful to poor Fanny, except for that one business. Dear Hugh, he really thinks no one knew about his caper with Emma! Just as Randall imagines now that no one knows he's carrying on with the Rimmer girl, whereas everyone knows!

'Ann doesn't know. You're a bit inclined to say» everyone knows» when what you mean is that you know.

'Well, it's true I know plenty. I certainly mean business here. To flaming youth let virtue be as wax. You don't think I'm too old for such nonsense, do you, Piggy?

'Too old? Humphrey laughed. 'I wonder what you really want, though.

'I want the impossible, Piggy. To be young again. I want a little miracle.

'Why not? said Humphrey. 'I'm not sure that I see Hugh as up to it, though.

'I'll bring him up to it! She rose to her feet. Now I'm going to interview Felix. Where is that boy? Is he still felling trees?

'When I last saw him he was carrying logs the size of himself into the woodshed. I told him to leave them for Smeed and the boy, but he took no notice.

'He's trying to take his mind off things, said Mildred, 'instead of using it on things. That's what I want to talk to him About. What are you going to do, Piggy?

'I think I'll just drive over to Grayhallock.

'I know, dominoes and whisky. That's where Felix ought to be too, now that the cat's away, only the boy is so confoundedly honourable. I suppose there's no word of the cat coming back?

'None at all, so far as I know.

'Well, enjoy yourself, only remember what I told you!

'But you didn't tell me anything this time!

'Well, remember what I would have told you if I hadn't thought you'd heard it so often before!

Mildred drew a light shawl about her shoulders and issued from the house. She paused upon the step to survey the garden. Against a sky of intense blue the thrush sang upon the cedar tree, winding all the visible things into the endless thread of his song. The stream seemed motionless, a line of green enamel beneath the chestnut trees, but the bamboos moved ever so slightly, like the secret gestures of friends.

The garden, so long familiar that it seemed a part of her mind, rapt Mildred into a trance of recollection, so that for the moment she forgot about Felix. Who knows what may be the results of random and seemingly isolated actions? She herself had embraced men whoso faces, even whose names, she had forgotten: gone, killed in two wan. So much of the past is annihilated and swept away. But other pieces live, and grow in the memory like powerful seeds. Perhaps some of her own forgotten actions were, in the minds of distant and unheeded persons, just such seeds. And Hugh, did he know, did he at all guess, what thing he planted, with what long consequences, when suddenly on that summer evening he had turned from looking at her reflection in the stream, and throwing his Ann over her shoulder had kissed her, holding her tightly for a long moment before he let her go? They had not spoken, then or since: But that quite isolated moment had had, for her, results. She recalled it now with such clarity, saw it in such detail, that the relentless interval of time seemed itself a dream. She remembered. And after the citronella Hugh had certainly remembered too; she had tricked him into remembering, she had, with such joy, seen him remembering.

He had set her, then, upon a long path. And just as she had started, so secretly and happily, upon her task of loving him, he had fallen in love with Emma Sands. Mildred, in those early days of her transformed consciousness of Hugh, had suffered. Emma was an old acquaintance of Mildred's, they had been at college together: someone, even then, a little nervously and uneasily to be reckoned with, never quite a friend. And it was with much curiosity, some triumph, and a little sympathy that Mildred had invited Emma to stay with her at Seton Blaise after the catastrophe. In another clairvoyant crystal of memory Mildred saw Emma on the lawn in a short white tennis dress, being captivated and consoled by the boy Felix. But her dark eyes had rested thoughtfully upon Mildred and she had read Mildred's mind, and her sharp clever dog-face had closed and hardened. They had parted then, not to meet again.

She need not have hated me, thought Mildred, for I gained nothing by her loss. And for a moment she felt quite sentimental about herself and about the years which the locusts had eaten. Yet the next moment she told herself that in a way she had quite enjoyed it all, she had enjoyed making up her myth of being in love with Hugh, and embellishing it and adding to it, and having it as a secret when in a way it was hardly a thing at all. But now, she thought, now I shall make all those shadows into the shadows of something. I shall make that long road a road that shall have led, after all, somewhere.

As she now went down the steps she heard from the stables the sound of Humphrey starting up the Rover, and as she reached the lawn she saw Felix at the side of the house, his head deep inside the bonnet of the very dark blue Mercedes. She came towards him, and saw beyond him the Rover disappearing down the drive.

'Really, Felix, said Mildred, 'I believe you love that car more than you love any of us!

Felix lifted his head and smiled. He leaned on the side of the bonnet wiping his hands on a bit of newspaper. 'It's the only thing I've got to look after! .

'And whose fault is that, pray? said Mildred.

Felix was Mildred's half-brother, and fifteen years her junior. He was a very tall man in his early forties with a big face and very blue eyes and a lot of short receding colourless fair hair which stood up fluffily upon his head. His face was pleasantly weather-beaten and worn into all. Expression of non-committal professional superiority, and revealed little of what, if anything, he felt. There was no subtle play of light, no gradual dawning of awareness, but only the sudden gaiety of a very brilliant smile and then a return to routine solemnity. Felix treated his sister with an unvarying amused politeness and usually foiled her attempts to run him by ignoring them altogether. He did not reply to her last remark, but bent forward again to inspect the interior of the Mercedes.