Ted looked deeper into the sky, half-closing his eyelids. It seemed to take
his body from him completely, to leave him nothing but a naked soothed
consciousness, rising and falling, a petal on a swinging bough, in the
heart of blue quietude like the quiet of an open place in a forest empty
with evening.

"Clouds," said Mrs. Severance's voice, turning the word to a sound breathed
lightly through the curled and husky gold of a forest-horn.

Through the midst of his sea-drowsiness a queer thought came to Ted. This
had happened before, in sleep perhaps, in a book he had read--Oliver's
novel, possibly, he thought and smiled. Lying alone on a roof of blue
water, and yet not lying alone, for there was that slow warm voice that
talked from time to time and came into the mind on tiptoe like the creeping
of soft-shoed, hasteless, fire. You stretched your hands to the fire and
let it warm you and soon your whole body was warm and pleased and alive.
That was when you were alive past measure, when all of you had been made
warm as a cat fed after being hungry, and the cat arose from its warmth and
went walking on velvet paws, stretching sleek legs, sleek body, slowly
and exquisitely under the firelight, heavy with warmth, but ready at the
instant signal of the small burning thing in its mind to turn like a black
butterfly and dance a slow seeking dance with the shadows of the fire that
flickered like leaves in light wind, desirable, impalpable and wavering,
never to be quite torn down from the wall and eaten and so possessed. But
there was an odd thirsty satisfaction in trying to tear the shadows.

Fantastic. He had not been so fantastic for a long time.

"And tomorrow there's 'Mode.' And fashion-plates. _And_ Greenwich
Villagers," said the voice of Mrs. Severance. He made some reply