Veronica paused, and did her reputation the credit of a long, inquiring, guarded upward glance, which the steepness of the ground, the long grass, and the closeness of the trees at a point combined to baffle. One’s own visibility is impossible to calculate. Then she scooped something out of the tank and put it down Victor’s neck. He seized her wrist and doubled it backwards. She writhed, and with a voluminous and graceful movement kicked him. As in a dance he whirled her round him suddenly and kissed her ear and cheek. She hesitated, balanced against him, then appearing reconciled to his change of tactics, flung her head back and allowed him to continue. He must have kissed her lips then for the first time; their stillness for some moments was profound.

Sydney’s imagination had failed her, she found herself disappointed in her own society and was coming back slowly to rejoin the others. To her, looking down unawares, the couple gesticulating soundlessly below her in the sunshine appeared as in some perfect piece of cinema-acting, emotion represented without emotion. Then she wondered by what roads now unknown to her she might arrive at this: to be seen swinging back against a man’s shoulder in that abandon of Veronica’s. She wondered whether at such a moment she would be cut off from herself, as by her other emotions. She watched the miniature unreal Veronica toss back her hair and walk away. At Victor she forgot to look again; she had not thought of him.

She descended upon the others, who seemed to be stupefied by something and to be at the same time scrutinizing one another and avoiding each other’s scrutiny. Then with a burst of talking they all came alive again and began clearing up the lunch, collecting pieces of paper which had strayed away and sweeping up orange peel and egg-shells from among the grass. Eileen Lawrence whistled, Mr Lee-Mittison sang. He was singing angrily a song that nobody knew. His wife was everywhere; she thanked the girls profusely as they heaped the debris into her basket. James Milton offered cigarette about spasmodically. His cheeks burned. He kept striking matches, burning his fingers with them and throwing the matches away again with exclamations of unnecessary violence. He had never seen a man and woman kiss before and was battering in a kind of despair against the glass wall that divided him from experience. He was thankful, with a tinge of regret, that Sydney had not been among them; then he turned and saw her behind him, talking to Eileen Lawrence. He could not tell how long she had been there. Sydney was saying, ‘Do you mean to tell Veronica?’ Eileen surprised him by saying, ‘Not unless she asks me – what’s the good?’