little dent above her innocent,
rounded chin. Its edge curled slightly forward in a line firm as ivory
and fine as the edge of a flower. As long as he lived he would remember
the way of it.

And she, she was aware of his body, slender and tense under his white
flannels. It seemed to throb with the power it held in, prisoned in the
smooth, tight muscles. His eyes showed the colour of dark hyacinths, set
in his clear, sun-browned skin. He smiled down at her, and his mouth and
little fawn brown moustache followed the tilted shadow of his nostrils.

Suddenly her whole body quivered as if his had touched it. And when she
looked at him she had the queer feeling that she saw him for the first
time. Never before like that. Never before.

But to him she was the same Anne. He knew her face as he knew his
mother's face or Colin's. He knew, he remembered all her ways.

And this was not what he wanted. He wanted some strange wonder and
excitement; he wanted to find it in Anne and in nobody but Anne, and he
couldn't find it. He wanted to be in love with Anne and he wasn't. She
was too near him, too much a part of him, too well-known, too
well-remembered. She made him restless and impatient, looking, looking
for the strangeness, the mystery he wanted and couldn't find.

If only he could have seen her suddenly for the first time.

iii

It was extraordinary how happy it made her to be with Aunt Adeline,
walking slowly, slowly, with her round the garden, stretched out beside
her on the terrace, following her abrupt moves from the sun into the
shade and back again; or sitting for hours with her in the big darkened
bedroom when Adeline had one of the bad headaches that attacked her now,
brushing her hair, and putting handkerchiefs soaked in eau-de-cologne on
her hot forehead.

Extraordinary, because this inactivity did violence to Anne's nature;
besides, Auntie Adeline behaved as if you were uninteresting and
unimportant, not attending to a word you said. Yet her strength lay in
her inconsistency. One minute her arrogance ignored you and the next she
came humbly and begged for your caresses; she was dependent, like a
child, on your affection. Anne thought that pathetic. And there was
always her fascination. That was absolute; above logic and morality,
irrefutable as the sweetness of a flower. Everybody felt it, even the
servants whom she tormented with her incalculable wants. Jerrold and
Colin, even Eliot, now that he was grown