THE WINDOW 129looking 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. Her hus-band spoke. He was repeating something, and sheknew it was poetry from the rhythm and the ringof 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 on waterout there, cut off from them all, as if no one had saidthem, but they had come into existence of them-selves.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,without looking round, that every one at the tablewas listening to the voice saying:I wonder if it seems to youLuriana, Lurileewith the same sort of relief and pleasure that she had,as if this were, at last, the natural thing to say, thiswere their own voice speaking.

But the voice stopped. She looked round. Shemade herself get up. Augustus Carmichael had
Resize Images  

Select Pane

Berg Materials
 

View Pane