leave-taking: an eyebrow which had stuck, the mouth biting on a last word, forever, as if it were a stone. Then she would stop. She developed heartburn, and sometimes her teeth would remain whole mornings in the tumbler. But, of course, the real cause of Mrs Jolley's distress was her employer. Once this was realized, Miss Hare had to suffer. The housekeeper walked about the house humming with intentions. Doors which she had never yet opened, she now tried, and, in the course of it all, climbed to the little dome in amethyst glass, under which she found airlessness and a quantity of old chicken bones. She was always ferreting into wardrobes, through forests of long, embroidered garments, in which the cold rain of metal beads would drizzle on the backs of her hands, and tendrils of feather and drifts of down, overlooked by nesting mice, revolt her nostrils. She had forced locks, when necessary, to interpret the letters stuffed inside a drawer, but never found more than words. In the absence of a real weapon, loaded with infallible lead, or furnished with a knife which would finish cleanly, yet cruelly, she was becoming truly desperate. It was not possible that such tunnels of decayed magnificence should lead only to an innocent and empty arena. Faced with this ultimate suspicion, Mrs Jolley was standing one morning beside the buhl table, upon which she suddenly noticed-it might always have been there, but her preoccupation could have caused her to overlook it-the fan tipped with flamingo feather, a present from the Armenian merchant in the hotel at Aswan. Mrs Jolley had barely opened the fan, a poor thing of broken tortoiseshell and tattered parchment, the feathers themselves deadened by the years, no longer flaming. She was standing, the fan half open, like her mind. When Miss Hare realized only too clearly. The latter had appeared in the doorway in her eternal wicker hat. That Mrs Jolley had discovered Mrs Hare's fan was in itself insignificant; the mother's relationship with her child had been one of duty rather than love. But now the daughter saw that the fan could be a hinge on which something might depend, opening out immeasurably. "I wish you would put it down," she suggested. "It is old and very fragile." "It is a lovely fan," Mrs Jolley simpered. Through her half-opened mind, she appeared half devilish, half girlish. "To carry at a ball," she added. Memories of occasions when she had offered trayfuls of ices to dancers spun garishly. "I do ask you to put it down," Miss Hare begged, without hope. "How they danced in their swansdown"-Mrs Jolley laughed-"till the moths got into it. All night, and into the morning." Then a terrible thing happened. Mrs Jolley began to dance, slowly at first, tentatively, sliding her practical work-shoes across the floor of the drawing-room at Xanadu. Her face was still only trying expressions, her arms and her body positions. But courage, or her daemon, prevailed. The muscles of her cheeks no longer twitched. Her mouth became fixed in the china smile of obsession, bluish-white. She was sliding and gliding, creaking, certainly-it could not have been otherwise in such a carapace-but borne along out of reach, or control, her own, or her employer's. Her _employer__! It had always made her laugh. More than ever now. Sliding and gliding, out of the drawing-room, into the dining-room. Even whirling. Mrs Jolley threw back her head. Her throat was taut. The laughter rose up through it, to be expelled in solid lumps. "At the ball! At the ball!" Mrs Jolley sang. And cracked. Whirling, and coughing. It was the dust. "However much you intend to hurt me, I shall not be hurt," Miss Hare called. "I shall not watch." But followed after-or could she have been leading? — in her wicker hat. She was trundling and stumbling, on her short, blunt legs. "All the young men were forever persisting," Mrs Jolley chanted, "to dance with the daughter of Xanadu." At the same time, she made a play, with her fan, with her eyes, which had grown too young for mercy: the blue eyes of future mothers. "All the young men with moustaches, and the smooth ones, too." How she shrieked. "And the limp cousins!" "Oh, dear!" panted Mrs Jolley. A tuft of flamingo flew out of the fan. Miss Hare followed. Or was she leading? In either case, she trundled. And whimpered. The figures of the dance, though developed deviously, through room and anteroom, along passages, across landings, and up the dangerous flights of stairs, led directly into the past, and this had never seemed more grotesque, draped with calico, and dry with rouge. As Miss Hare followed-or led-and Mrs Jolley danced, sometimes obscenely moulded to a partner's chest, sometimes compelling a gilded chair to execute a teetering step, all the dancers of all the waltzes returned to Xanadu: the grave bosoms and the little pippins, the veins of coral and of watered ink, the chalk cheeks and the tortured mops, and the gentlemen, the gentlemen. Never had the ache of patent leather been admitted to such an extent as on the occasion of Mrs Jolley's lethal performance. Never had the music from Sydney broken more brilliantly under the chandelier. Never had the conversation opened deeper wounds. Shuffling, trundling, blundering, the dancers frequently threatened to tumble over the balusters. Miss Hare held her heart, and Mrs Jolley her breath. In spite of the fascination of the arabesques it was possible to spin out of air and music, at the risk of death, the mistress preferred to see the one-step. It was so much kinder to the long beauties, working so hard and sad, as they pushed against the tum-ti-tum. It was terribly sad, in the great, tatty, brilliant rooms, in mirror and memory. Miss Hare really had to protest at last. "Stop! Please, stop!" she called, and the strings which controlled her actions mercifully held up her hand. Then the dancers stopped. Mrs Jolley stopped. "Thank you," gasped Miss Hare. "I cannot be expected to experience too much in one day." She was almost extinguished beneath the snuffer of her heavy hat. Mrs Jolley was surprised, and might have sounded more reproving if breathlessness had not prevented it. "You have led me such a dance," she said. "You could have broken both our necks, but I hardly like to offer criticism, not in my position, and because we know there are times when you are not in full possession of yourself. Even so." "Full possession?" asked Miss Hare. So softly. The housekeeper wondered whether she had gone too far, then decided to go farther. It was her opportunity. "You will not remember an evening on the terrace"-Mrs Jolley was in a hurry-"or what you said, or what you did, or how you passed out cold." "Which evening on the terrace?" asked Miss Hare. Softly. "I cannot be expected to trot out dates." Mrs Jolley's teeth snapped. "Or quote exact words. But I had the marks on my wrists for several days." "I hurt you?" "I'll say! And might have done real damage if you hadn't passed right out." "And I can remember nothing." "It was like a kind of fit." An undulating dread threatened to drown Miss Hare. "I told you nothing?" she had to ask. "Nothing of importance?" "That depends on what is important." "Tell me," Miss Hare ordered. Mrs Jolley wondered whether she would. "Tell me, Mrs Jolley," the mistress was insisting. Then Mrs Jolley changed her tactics, partly because she sensed an impending _coup de grâce__, partly since she was a little bit afraid. "It was about the Chariot." She inserted the remark, nor would fear prevent her watching the result. "I will not be told lies!" Miss Hare shouted. "The truth is always truest when other people call it lies," Mrs Jolley answered in her triumph. "You are a wicked, evil woman!" Miss Hare accused. "I knew it! All along I knew it!" "Who is not wicked and evil, waiting for chariots at sunset, as if they was taxis?" "Oh, you are bad, bad!" Miss Hare confirmed. "And you are sick. I was foolish not to have called a doctor, but did not, well, out of respect for feelings." "You must never call a doctor. Never, never!" "I will not be here," said Mrs Jolley, "long." "You will be with your thoughts, and that will be worse." "What do you know about my thoughts?" "Only what you have told me." Mrs Jolley had some difficulty in releasing the handfuls of her apron. "If we are two of a kind," she mumbled. Miss Hare could not accept the possibility of that, and was rootling in remote recesses for some evidence of her own election. "What did I really say?" she coaxed. "That evening? On the terrace?" But Mrs Jolley was sulking. If Miss Hare had not felt so exhausted, she might have known more alarm. There was a hornet crying as it built its nest in a doorway. The housekeeper had evaporated in her usual manner. A windy desert, somewhere, could not have been emptier than the hornet's cry suggested. Yet, it was one of the lusher mornings of spring, after the grass had taken over. The immediate world appeared to be living under grass. Light was no longer distributed by the sun in honest golden metal; it oozed, a greenish, steamy yellow, from the flesh of grass. As Miss Hare went out into the green prevalence, the arrowheads of grass pricked her; she was the target of thousands. But had experienced worse, of course. So she went on. She went down, through the militant, sharp, clattering grass, and through patches of shade where the soft, indolent swathes lolled and stank. She went to where the orchard had once been, and which she had not visited, it seemed to her, for years. Neglect, however, had not cancelled celebration. The tangle of staggy trees paraded a fresh varnish, stuck by intermittent grace with virgin heads of blossom. There was the plum tree, too, the largest anyone had ever seen. The plum had obviously reached the height of its glory for that year. Its crowded white dared the grass, brought the colour back to the sky. The sun had returned, moreover, in its own right, and hung a spangled banner on the tree. Miss Hare went on pushing through the musky grass. She could have swum forever, on her wave, towards the island of her tree, holding out her hands, no longer begging for rescue, but in recognition. And he came out from under the branches, from where he had been sitting, apparently. "Oh," she said then, and stopped, knee-deep in the waves of grass. He stood outside the tree waiting for her, though it was nobody she had ever seen. "I came in here," said the man. "I saw the tree." "Yes," she said. "It is mine. Isn't it lovely? And I have not noticed it for years." She was making little grunting sounds, of happiness, and recognition. The man appeared to recognize, or, at least, not to reject. Which was comforting. He was a very ugly man, and strange, she saw. "Would you care to sit down, in the shade," she asked, "and enjoy the tree?" She was filled with such a contentment of warmth and light she would not have cared if he had refused. She had been refused so regularly. But the man did not reject her offer. "I am Himmelfarb," he said, correctly, but oddly. "Oh, yes?" she answered. At the same time they stooped to negotiate the branches, which were to provide their canopy.