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books she stacked on the bedside table; hung up her clothes in a tremendous wardrobe above a pair of old boot-trees. She went to the window and leant out for a moment. The goose wandered no more in the rose garden. Rain fell from leaf to leaf, rolled down the ivy, ran over the windows, oily like gin. She turned away and began to undress, brushed out her smooth brown hair a hundred times as her mother had always said she should and then (her father’s bidding) read a page of Shakespeare, peering at the thin India paper with her rather weak eyes; and, reaching the bottom of the page and leaving Lady Macbeth in the middle of unsexing herself, she closed the book and climbed into the frivolous Edwardian bed.
    Now, at last, the luxury might for a little be indulged in – the summing-up, the verdict, the easy weeping, the pity. She cried a little against her arm, the tears running out of the corners of her eyes, until she was forced to stop so that she might strain her ears listening to a muffled commotion somewhere outside, a scuffling on loose wet gravel, a gentle cursing. The noise stopped abruptly and a door slammed. Rather fearfully, for it was all unlike the atmosphere of home or school or any she had ever known, she put her head down upon the pillow and laythere, not relaxed enough now for weeping, but very tired, and soon, her head still filled with muddled conjecture, the boundaries grew vague, all that was familiar melted away and the fantastic, the forbidden, the gigantic stood in view; lost thoughts slipped through the majestic visions; her will loosened, she sank down through sleep, losing herself, finding herself; yet, however lost, the sleeping are unlike the dead, for still the mind murmured ‘I.’ She said ‘I, Cassandra.’ ‘I, myself, Cassandra.’ Then the lady in the blue fox leant forward very close and rapped on the carriage window, she smiled and drummed her knuckles hard against the glass.
    At that moment, there
was
a sound like that in the house, although Cassandra did not know. It was Tom coming up the stairs and trailing his stick along the bannister-rails.
    ‘Tom!’ hissed Margaret, coming out on to the landing, with her dressing-gown tied tightly round.
    He took no notice. He walked on to his own room and slammed the door. Margaret watched for a moment and went back to bed.
    In his room, Tom sat on the edge of his bed and rested his elbows on his knees and stared intently at his swinging hands. When he was tired of doing that, he began to pull at his tie; the knot slid tighter, and he cursed. After that, he sat down again for a while and rested. Presently he was altogether undressed. He poured a glass of water and placed it beside his bed, put on his pyjama jacket and suddenly, aloud, said: ‘O.K. Good. Swell. Fine.’ He felt all right, except for his head, which seemed to be opening and shutting or, like swing doors, letting in gusts of sound, long waves of quiet, gusts of sound, alternately, with regularity. He got into bed and took a sip of water. When he put his face to the pillow, lying sideways, ‘the best moment of the day,’ he thought. But the bed swung round suddenly and cruelly, that relentless lurching movement thatgave the feeling of helpless terror in the abdomen. ‘Steady,’ he thought. ‘Not again. Better in the morning.’
    He lay very still and quiet, not to frighten sleep away, as if it would creep up stealthily, a timid little animal, would not come if it knew he was there, waiting, greedily, artfully.

CHAPTER FOUR
     
    In the morning, the garden, the house, sprang up, jewelled in the bright air. Each leaf, each blade of grass flashed with colour, the broken statues of nymphs before the house whitened in the sun. Pomona and Flora, still with wet eye-sockets, wet folds of drapery, held out chipped fruit and flowers to dry.
    At breakfast, there was another note beside Cassandra’s plate.
     
‘Dear Miss Dashwood,
    Will you be good enough to make out a timetable for