“I dislike having the house to myself in the autumn, and most people have made their plans by now. Of course I might ask one of your cousins, Sholto’s girls. It has been in my mind for some time to ask Joanna. Joanna used to be fond of the country, and has no home of her own to go to these days. That is one thing I will say for your poor Aunt Juley – she brought her children up to be hardy. I remember how they used to run about in all weathers like so many young colts. Yes, I shall tell Joanna to come in August and see her old Aunt.”

II

At the moment when Aunt Georgina’s invitation was being fastened in its envelope, Joanna, a little dazed by her long journey, stood once more by the widely spilled water of Torre del Lago. She stood looking across the white expanse that seven years before had marked the turning of her life from dream to reality; clearly she now knew that turning for what it was – but a part of her inevitable progression towards death. She had lived out the dream, had embraced the reality, and now death was fulfilled in her. She saw that, however different might have been the circumstances of her travelling in it, for her at least there could have been no other progression. Now it might be that death was her portion, or it might be that out of her very recognition and acceptance of death, a new life might spring. It came to her that the world was walked by thousands who were dead and whose true deathliness lay in their continued assertion of life. Such life surely was mere putrefaction, and from putrefaction came no new life worth having. The phoenix could not rise anew but from its acknowledged ashes. Anyhow she relinquished all claim to the old life. She rested in the void and was content to bide her time without a single defiant reaching forth.

And while Joanna climbed the steep winding path to the cottage (since her last visit there was no change in the hillside save that now on every hand the cherry trees declared themselves from among the olives by their brighter fruit) Aunt Georgina – in her old age sometimes generous on second thoughts – was re-opening her invitation and inserting a cheque.

ΙII

Though the door stood open, Aunt Perdy was not in the cottage. Nor was she in the garden. Aurora however-larger and handsomer than ever, with two babies grabbing at her skirts – was there cutting artichokes, and upon catching sight of the unlooked-for visitor, she uttered a cry of mingled surprise and welcome.