s.... Everything
was growing brighter and brighter....

Gertrude Goldring, the Australian, was making noises with her hands like
inflated paper bags being popped. Miriam clutched her wool-needle and
threaded it. She drew the wool through her canvas, one, three, five,
three, one and longed for the piano to begin again.

7

Clara Bergmann followed. Miriam watched her as she took her place at the
piano--how square and stout she looked and old, careworn, like a woman
of forty. She had high square shoulders and high square hips---her brow
was low and her face thin and broad and flat. Her eyes were like the
eyes of a dog and her thin-lipped mouth long and straight until it
went steadily down at the corners. She wore a large fringe like
Harriett's--and a thin coil of hair filled the nape of her neck. She
played, without music, her face lifted boldly. The notes rang out in
a prelude of unfinished phrases--the kind, Miriam noted, that had so
annoyed her father in what he called new-fangled music--she felt it was
going to be a brilliant piece--fireworks--execution--style--and sat up
self-consciously and fixed her eyes on Clara's hands. "Can you see the
hands?" she remembered having heard someone say at a concert. How easily
they moved. Clara still sat back, her face raised to the light. The
notes rang out like trumpet-calls as her hands dropped with an easy
fling and sprang back and dropped again. What loose wrists she must
have, thought Miriam. The clarion notes ceased. There was a pause. Clara
threw back her head, a faint smile flickered over her face, her hands
fell gently and the music came again, pianissimo, swinging in an even
rhythm. It flowed from those clever hands, a half-indicated theme with a
gentle, steady, throbbing undertow. Miriam dropped her eyes--she seemed
to have been listening long--that wonderful light was coming again--she
had forgotten her sewing--when presently she saw, slowly circling,
fading and clearing, first its edge, and then, for a moment the whole
thing, dripping, dripping as it circled, a weed-grown mill-wheel....
She recognised it instantly. She had seen it somewhere as a child--in
Devonshire--and never thought of it since--and there it was. She heard
the soft swish and drip of the water and the low humming of the wheel.
How beautiful... it was fading.... She held it--it returned--clearer
this time and she could feel the cool breeze it made, and sniff the
fresh earthy scent of it, the s