The Euston Road was a narrow hot channel of noise and unbreathable odours, the dusty exhausting cruelty of the London summer, leading on to the feathery green floored woods of Endsleigh Gardens edged by grey house fronts, and ending in the cool stone of St. Pancras Church.
In the twilit dining-room one’s body was like a hot sun throbbing in cool dark air, ringed by cool walls holding darkness in far corners; coolness poured out through the wide-open windows towards the rain-cool grey façades of the opposite houses, cool and cool until the throbbing ceased.
All the forms seated round the table were beautiful; faraway and secret and separate, each oneself set in the coming of summer, unconscious. One soul. Summer is the soul of man. Through all the past months they had been the waiting guests of summer.
The pain of trying to get back into the moment of the first vision of spring, the perfect moment before the thought came that spring was going on in the country unseen, was over. The moment came back of itself … the green flush in the squares, the ripples of emerald fringed pink geraniums along the balconies of white houses.
After dinner Miriam left the dining-room, driven joyfully forth, remaining behind, floating and drifting happily about, united with everyone in the room as her feet carried her step by step without destination, going everywhere, up through the staircase twilight. …
The drawing-room was filled with saffron light, filtering in through the curtains hanging motionless before the high French windows. Within the air of the room, just inside the faint smell of dusty upholstery was the peace of the new found summer. Mrs. Bailey’s gift. There had been no peace of summer last year in her stifling garret. This year the summer was with her, in the house where she was. Far away within the peace of the room was the evening of a hot summer day at Waldstrasse, the girls sitting about, beautiful featureless forms together forever in the blissful