"Yours dear, I think."

Upon which Edge rose, and, with her, all the staff, and each one of the students. When the noise had subsided Miss Edge brought the session to a close with a shout of two prime, immemorial words. "Thank you," she cried in a great voice, looking brilliant.

"Thank you, ma'am," they all replied traditionally, and luncheon was over.

The buzzers went for tea.

It was five o'clock. Most of the students were on their beds, after waiting in queues all afternoon to iron the cotton frocks they were to wear that same evening, for the dance. These first floor dormitories overlooked the Park, with tall windows brilliant in summer sky, as the variously bedded girls lay yawning, stretching, happy to take time because today they were allowed half an hour in which to be down for tea.

Panelling around the walls was enamelled in white paint, as also the bedsteads with pink covers, the parquet floor was waxed and gold, two naked Cupids in cold white marble, and life size, held up a slab of green above a basket grate, while white and brown arms were stretched into the tide of late afternoon pouring by; a redhead caught fire with sun like a flare and, out of the sun, eyes, opening to reflected light, like jewels enclosed by flesh coloured anemones beneath green clear water when these yawn after shrimps, disclosed great innocence in a scene on which no innocence had ever shone, where life and pursuit was fierce, as these girls came back to consciousness from the truce of a summer after luncheon before the business of the dance.

For already shadows were on the creep towards this mansion.

Beech trees were pointing fingers out along the quiet ground. Day was committed to night; the sequence here is light then darkness, and what had been begun in this community under the glare of morning, is yet to be concealed in a sharp fresh of moonlight, a statuary of day after sunset, to be lost, at last, when the usual cloud drifts over the full moon.

"Hasn't it been hot?" a girl's clear voice announced. How warm it had been, Miss Edge shaped five words without a sound as, at the noise of the buzzers, she turned on a chaise longue across which she was stretched in the sanctum. Then she sat up straight. How could she have dropped off, she asked herself, with Mary missing yet? She reached out for the telephone and spoke to Matron. No, there was still no news. Then, as her head cleared and she moved a dry tongue about her mouth, she felt more than ever this temporary disappearance must only be an escapade; that, at all events, their little Fiesta, as she now termed the coining entertainment, could not be cancelled at the whim of a single student who, in a moment of jealousy perhaps, had hidden herself from some adolescent qualm, thus laying their Institute open to the Grand Inquisition of a State Enquiry, and the horror of Reports.

Meantime the lovers, Sebastian and Elizabeth, were asleep in that same corner of a fallen beech found by Merode, and to which they had returned. They lay under lace of gold, through the hush of an afternoon's fine heat, at rest in one another's added warmth, in a peace of sleep.

Her tangled head lay on his arm, her left hand between the tutor's shirt and jacket. She stirred, and it woke him. When he moved, she came awake in turn. She yawned, and her tongue, too, was coated. She said, "Oh darling, it's cooler." She kissed his sticky cheek. Then she sat straight with a jerk.

He lay on his back, wore a sulky expression.

"Good heavens," she went on, "Here we've been snoring, isn't it awful, and all the while that poor girl's lord knows where, dear. What d'you think? Isn't it awful?"

He gently said, "Don't fuss."

"Yes but I've got to think of your position, haven't I? I mean it's no use to make pretence that what Gapa calls the Babylonian harlots just aren't here, is it? Particularly when they've got it in for you, darling."

"The child's probably back now," he murmured.

"Why be beastly about her, Seb? I expect, you know, she couldn't help herself, poor soul. Driven to it, don't you see, by something or other, wouldn't you say?"

He raised himself. He kissed her. Then he looked at his watch.

"Tea," he said, and got to his feet.

"Well we did search about, I mean before, didn't we?" she asked, scrambled up, and tried to smooth her slacks, at one and the same time.

When she heard the buzzers, Ma Marchbanks took a wet towel off closed eyes and let her hand fall back, which still held this towel, over the far side of the armchair. She had a splitting headache. She had been backwards and forwards in the Park through blazing heat of afternoon, and now her head drummed with sun, roll upon roll of pain behind the eyes to cauterise her brain. And she could not ignore that scene she had had with Adams.

She'd come on him at such a curious spot, the clearing by the New Plantation, where he was seated in a sort of hut, which she did not recognise, that seemed to be made entirely of old doors, and which, if behind a dwelling house instead of out in the open, could have been taken by anyone for the outside privy back of an uncultivated garden of a few wild, gay, separate flowers.

"Adams," she'd said, as she thought secure in his sympathy, for they had always got on well, "Oh Adams I am so worried." Just that. And he'd answered with a really rude voice, "It's what every man and woman living is heir to, miss."

"Which does not make anything easier, does it?" she'd replied, and wondered if he spent every afternoon like this, not chopping trees. At that he had come right towards her, away from that hut or whatever the thing was, and, when all was said and done, likely enough he would have acted much the same whatever she said, but he'd cried out in the revealing sunlight, and she had seen he was shaking, "Why do you keep on at me, the lot of you?" he had shouted, looking dreadful, and it was then she'd remembered he had lost his wife.

"Adams," was all she was able to reply, "you are not yourself," and had walked off. But, after this, she'd searched too fast, she reminded herself to excuse the headache, had looked everywhere at twice the speed. One or two parties of girls were out as well. It showed the right spirit. And there was the haste, the haste she'd used, dashing empty handed to and fro, after she'd met Adams, must have brought on this ghastly head. But she knew the time was not now, with Miss Edge in her present mood, to dare not to put in an appearance at tea, down in the Hall.

Tremblingly, therefore, Marchbanks got up to dash cold water on her brow.

Mr Rock had been doing his kitchen out all afternoon, at work with an old man's painful slowness. Then he'd brewed himself a cup and left the pot, in case Birt and Elizabeth came, parched, in from their ploys about the grounds. Now he had lit a pipe, and gone to his pig. He leant against the sty to watch the animal laid down, in shade, with feebly twitching ears and an occasional weak grunt, given over to the heat and comfort of summer.

Mr Rock, as well, had thoughts for Mary; now and again considered whether he should not take a turn round the lake, in case the girl was floated three inches under water; and his excuse for going, if he was seen, or if he made the discovery, would of course be Ted, his goose. For that child had been driven to desperation, he told himself, there was never a clearer case, he'd eyes in his head, he had noted for himself the overwork other children were already whispering about. Hadn't he the example of his own granddaughter before him? It was savage the extra hours they made Mary do in their kitchen just because they liked the way she served a plate, and all the while driving her on to those final examinations, with that power they had, and which was now revealed, or, so he feared, proved, of life and death.