almost reflected the startling white of the gulls' wings and, as she
looked at it, she saw that its colour was made up of many; there was
pink in it and blue and, as a big cloud passed over the sun, it became
subtly purple; it was a palette of subdued and tender shades.

Henrietta heaved a sigh. This was too much. She could look at it but
she could not see it all. Yet this marvellous place belonged to her,
and she knew now whence had come the glamour in the stories her father
had told her when she was a child. It had come from here, where an
aged city had tried to conquer the country and had failed, for the
spirit of woods and open spaces, of water and trees and wind, survived
among the very roofs. The conventions of the centuries, the convention
of puritanism, of worldliness, of impiety, of materialism and of
charity had all assailed and all fallen back before the strength of
the apparently peaceful country in which the city stood. The air was
soft with a peculiar, undermining softness; it carried with it a smell
of flowers and fruit and earth, and if all the many miles on the
farther side of the bridge should be ravished by men's hands, covered
with buildings and strewn with the ugly luxuries they thought they
needed, the spirit would remain in the tainted air and the imprisoned
earth. It would whisper at night at the windows, it would smile
invisibly under the sun, it would steal into men's minds and work its
will upon them. And already Henrietta felt its power. She was in a new
world, dull but magical, torpid yet alert.

She turned away and, walking down another little path threaded through
the rocks, she stood at the entrance to the bridge and watched people
on foot, people on bicycles, people in carts coming and going over it.
She could not cross herself for she had not a penny in her pocket, but
she stood there gazing and sometimes looking down at the road two