THE WINDOWlooked at the window in which the candle flamesburnt brighter now that the panes were black, andlooking at that outside the voices came to her verystrangely, as if they were voices at a service in acathedral, for she did not listen to the words. Thesudden bursts of laughter and then one voice(Minta’s) speaking alone, reminded her of men andboys crying out the Latin words of a service in someRoman Catholic cathedral. She waited. Herhusband spoke. He was repeating something,and she knew it was poetry from the rhythm andthe ring of exaltation and melancholy in his voice:Come out and climb the garden path,Luriana Lurilee.The China rose is all abloom and buzzing with the yellow bee.

The words (she was looking at the window)sounded as if they were floating like flowers onwater out there, cut off from them all, as if no onehad said them, but they had come into existenceof themselves.And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to beAre full of trees and changing leaves.

She did not know what they meant, but, likemusic, the words seemed to be spoken by her ownvoice, outside her self, saying quite easily andnaturally what had been in her mind the wholeevening while she said different things. She knew,171
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