Now that he had recovered, her mind was filled with horror at the idea of this alien at large in her room.

Suddenly, before she had known what she was doing, before she had decided to speak, before she knew of what to speak, her voice escaped from her hoarsely:

‘What do you want? Oh, what do you want? This is my room. My room.’

Fuchsia clasped her hands at the curve of her breasts in the attitude of prayer. But she was not praying. Her nails were digging into the flesh of either hand. Her eyes were wide open.

‘Go away,’ she said. ‘Go away from my room.’ And then her whole mood changed as her feelings arose like a tempest.

‘I hate you!’ she shouted, and stamped her foot upon the ground. ‘I hate you for coming here. I hate you in my room.’ She seized the table edge with both her hands behind her and rattled it on its legs.

Steerpike watched her carefully.

His mind had been working away behind his high forehead. Unimaginative himself he could recognize imagination in her: he had come upon one whose whole nature was the contradiction of his own. He knew that behind her simplicity was something he could never have. Something he despised as impractical. Something which would never carry her to power nor riches, but would retard her progress and keep her apart in a world of her own make-believe. To win her favour he must talk in her own language.

As she stood breathless beside the table and as he saw her cast her eyes about the room as though to find a weapon, he struck an attitude, raising one hand, and in an even, flat, hard voice that contrasted, even to Fuchsia in her agony, with her own passionate outcry said:

‘Today I saw a great pavement among the clouds made of grey stones, bigger than a meadow. No one goes there. Only a heron.

‘Today I saw a tree growing out of a high wall, and people walking on it far above the ground. Today I saw a poet look out of a narrow window. But the stone field that is lost in the clouds is what you’d like best. Nobody goes there. It’s a good place to play games and to’ (he took the plunge cunningly) ‘and to dream of things.’ Without stopping, for he felt that it would be hazardous to stop:

‘I saw today,’ he said, ‘a horse swimming in the top of a tower: I saw a million towers today. I saw clouds last night. I was cold. I was colder than ice. I have had no food. I have had no sleep.’ He curled his lip in an effort at a smile. ‘And then you pour green filth on me,’ he said.