It is Ascension Day in a village of the West. In the low
panelled hall-sittingroom of the BURLACOMBE'S farmhouse on the
village green, MICHAEL STRANGWAY, a clerical collar round his
throat and a dark Norfolk jacket on his back, is playing the
flute before a very large framed photograph of a woman, which is
the only picture on the walls. His age is about thirty-five his
figure thin and very upright and his clean-shorn face thin,
upright, narrow, with long and rather pointed ears; his dark
hair is brushed in a coxcomb off his forehead. A faint smile
hovers about his lips that Nature has made rather full and he
has made thin, as though keeping a hard secret; but his bright
grey eyes, dark round the rim, look out and upwards almost as if
he were being crucified. There is something about the whole of
him that makes him seen not quite present. A gentle creature,
burnt within.

A low broad window above a window-seat forms the background to
his figure; and through its lattice panes are seen the outer
gate and yew-trees of a churchyard and the porch of a church,
bathed in May sunlight. The front door at right angles to the
window-seat, leads to the village green, and a door on the left
into the house.

It is the third movement of Veracini's violin sonata that
STRANGWAY plays. His back is turned to the door into the house,
and he does not hear when it is opened, and IVY BURLACOMBE, the
farmer's daughter, a girl of fourteen, small and quiet as a
mouse, comes in, a prayer-book in one hand, and in the other a
gloss of water, with wild orchis and a bit of deep pink
hawthorn. She sits down on the window-seat, and having opened