Sydney’s day had been so far as perfect as a bubble; she felt careless of it, as though the bubble could not burst. Happiness, she said to herself, is not to be solicited, but coming, for however short a time, comes with an appearance of finality, to be juggled with offhand. It seems to be some kind of balance, as in riding a bicycle, attempted painfully a thousand times and achieved at last without effort. Her senses were absorbed by the carnations, she barely looked ahead, and she could be conscious of the street only as a sharp distinction between sun and shadow. Crossing over, she walked in the sun, where dogs stretched their lengths in abandon on the hot pavement. She must have been made conspicuous by her abstraction or by her yellow dress; people turned to stare at her and a tram announced by a hum of overhead wires rushed past with a long smudge of faces turned her way. She left the street but delayed her return to the Hotel by following a series of by-paths, pausing now and then to stare idly through some barred gate into a garden. She was mapping out for herself a deep-down life in which emotions ceased their clashing together and friends appeared only as painted along the edge of one’s quietness.

At a turn of the footpath she met the Barry children going down to the shore with their nurse. There were several of them, very much alike; their number appalled Sydney, who stood back against the wall. Cordelia Barry, the eldest, walked by herself a little ahead of the others, ostentatiously carrying a book.

‘The whole family of us all again, you see!’ she exclaimed affectedly. ‘Oh, dear Miss Warren, what lovely carnations! Oh, I do love them!’

She was a child of about eleven, with long thin legs and an eager tremolo. Sydney, who considered that she had been demoralized by overmuch grown-up attention, said, ‘Do you?’ unresponsively. She did not intend to give any carnations to Cordelia.

‘You aren’t going for a walk, I suppose?’ said Cordelia wistfully. ‘Mother said I might go with anybody who would have me, but that I would have to go with Nanny if everybody else fell through.’

‘Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you. But I expect it will be nice on the shore.’

‘Hoo!’ said Cordelia, pouncing on this note of falsity. She tilted her head back to stare up at Sydney from under the brim of her hat. ‘How stupid you’d be if you really believed that! Nice on the shore!’

‘Come along, Cordelia!’ called back Nanny in the flat voice of one who is employing the imperative continually and without effect.

Cordelia clutched at Sydney’s dress. ‘Lovely yellow thing,’ she said feverishly. ‘Beautiful Miss Warren, won’t you take me for a walk?’