everything's been so different. It's their mother, I think, even more
than themselves. I seem to have grown up just looking on at life as at
a show; watching it, thinking about it, trying to understand--not living
it at all. I must get over that; I will. I believe I can tell the very
moment I began to love him. It was in the schoolroom the second evening.
Sheila and I were sitting there just before dinner, and he came, in a
rage, looking splendid. 'That footman put out everything just as if I
were a baby--asked me for suspenders to fasten on my socks; hung the
things on a chair in order, as if I couldn't find out for myself what
to put on first; turned the tongues of my shoes out!--curled them over!'
Then Derek looked at me and said: 'Do they do that for you?--And poor
old Gaunt, who's sixty-six and lame, has three shillings a week to buy
him everything. Just think of that! If we had the pluck of flies--' And
he clenched his fists. But Sheila got up, looked hard at me, and said:
'That'll do, Derek.' Then he put his hand on my arm and said: 'It's
only Cousin Nedda!' I began to love him then; and I believe he saw it,
because I couldn't take my eyes away. But it was when Sheila sang
'The Red Sarafan,' after dinner, that I knew for certain. 'The Red
Sarafan'--it's a wonderful song, all space and yearning, and yet such
calm--it's the song of the soul; and he was looking at me while she
sang. How can he love me? I am nothing--no good for anything! Alan calls
him a 'run-up kid, all legs and wings.' Sometimes I hate Alan; he's
conventional and stodgy--the funny thing is that he admires Sheila.
She'll wake him up; she'll stick pins into him. No, I don't want Alan
hurt--I want every one in the world to be happy, happy--as I am....
The next day was the thunder-storm. I never saw lightning so near--and
didn't care a bit. If he were struck I knew I should be; that made it
all right. When you love, you don't care, if only the something must
happen to you both. When it was over, and we came out from behind the
stack and walked home through the fields, all the beasts looked at us as