flat and still, like water, flooded with the thin, clear light; grey
earth, shot delicately with green blades, shimmering. Ley Street, a grey
road, whitening suddenly where it crossed open country, a hard causeway
thrown over the flood. The high trees, the small, scattered cottages, the
two taverns, the one tall house had the look of standing up in water.

She saw the queer white light for the first time and drew in her breath
with a sharp check. She knew that the fields were beautiful.

She saw Five Elms for the first time: the long line of its old red-tiled
roof, its flat brown face; the three rows of narrow windows, four at the
bottom, with the front door at the end of the row, five at the top, five
in the middle; their red brick eye-brows; their black glassy stare
between the drawn-back curtains. She noticed how high and big the house
looked on its slender plot of grass behind the brick wall that held up
the low white-painted iron railing.

A tall iron gate between brown brick pillars, topped by stone balls. A
flagged path to the front door. Crocuses, yellow, white, white and
purple, growing in the border of the grass plot. She saw them for the
first time.

The front door stood open. She went in.

The drawing-room at the back was full of the queer white light. Things
stood out in it, sharp and suddenly strange, like the trees and houses in
the light outside: the wine-red satin stripes in the grey damask curtains
at the three windows; the rings of wine-red roses on the grey carpet; the
tarnished pattern on the grey wall-paper; the furniture shining like dark
wine; the fluted emerald green silk in the panel of the piano and the