isher upon any faint flame of the human spirit that might survive
the midday heat, but Susan sat in her room afterwards, turning over and
over the delightful fact that Mr. Venning had come to her in the garden,
and had sat there quite half an hour while she read aloud to her aunt.
Men and women sought different corners where they could lie unobserved,
and from two to four it might be said without exaggeration that the
hotel was inhabited by bodies without souls. Disastrous would have been
the result if a fire or a death had suddenly demanded something heroic
of human nature, but tragedies come in the hungry hours. Towards four
o'clock the human spirit again began to lick the body, as a flame licks
a black promontory of coal. Mrs. Paley felt it unseemly to open her
toothless jaw so widely, though there was no one near, and Mrs. Elliot
surveyed her found flushed face anxiously in the looking-glass.

Half an hour later, having removed the traces of sleep, they met each
other in the hall, and Mrs. Paley observed that she was going to have
her tea.

"You like your tea too, don't you?" she said, and invited Mrs. Elliot,
whose husband was still out, to join her at a special table which she
had placed for her under a tree.

"A little silver goes a long way in this country," she chuckled.

She sent Susan back to fetch another cup.

"They have such excellent biscuits here," she said, contemplating a
plateful. "Not sweet biscuits, which I don't like--dry biscuits . . .
Have you been sketching?"

"Oh, I've done two or three little daubs," said Mrs. Elliot, speaking
rather louder than usual. "But it's so difficult after Oxfordshire,
where there are so many trees. The light's so strong here. Some people
admire it, I know, but I find it very fatiguing."

"I really don't need cooking, Susan," said Mrs. Paley, when her niece
returned. "I must trouble you to move me." Everything had to be moved.
Finally the old lady was placed so that the light wavered over her,
as though she were a fish in a net. Susan poured out tea, and was just
remarking that they were having hot weather in Wiltshire too, when Mr.
Venning asked whether he might join them.

"It's so nice to find a young man who doesn't despise tea," said Mrs.
Paley, regaining her good humour. "One of my nephews the other day asked
for a glass of sherry--at five o'clock! I told him he could get it at
the public house round the corner, but not in my drawing room."

"I'd rather