It is two, three hundred yards, she said, trying not to run. Two, three hundred yards beyond the shop, beyond the blacksmith’s, to the open mouth of the lane and the one elm, with its crown of cold, deserted nests. She listened to her footsteps deepen in tone as they passed the biscuit-coloured church, from which came an echo of Sunday school. Behind the frosty window of the shop, the barley sugar and acid drops pooled their colour, became a blur. And then by some dispensation she was in the lane, where the wind blew cold but unfelt between thorns, and a cluster of scarlet bryony clung to its withered navel-string. Now her face could take its natural line, now her arms could take possession of their separate wills, one hand pulling at a blade of grass, the other non-existent in the swinging muff.

Kitty Goose marched with a definite purpose, even though it was before its time. Better to wait in the lane than smoothing your gloves on the edge of the bed, elation falling as you caught your face in the glass. Better too, as she said, and he agreed, to meet at the corner than in the street. Because, she said. And he agreed again. He could come at three with the dog-cart, where the lane met the main road. Now from the safety of her own mind, she received the dog-cart at the front door, kept it waiting for a moment or two after Miss Emmy Spalding’s knock, then swept out arranging her furs. Why, Willy, she said, you’re early, she said. And Mrs Hicks stopped dusting her plant, and the two Miss Spaldings stiffened, mahogany and horsehair, behind the parlour lace. A pity winter had eliminated the possibility of a boater. A pity also – There were a thousand pities, among them her lack of courage to receive Willy Standish in the main street. But her legs were water when she thought of this, except as a fantasy in her own mind.

Anyway, that sort of thing was silly, silly and unnecessary, but which she liked to indulge in from time to time. Like Turkish delight. She had made herself quite sick that Christmas, the queer, soft, pretty stuff in its wooden box, and the powdered sugar falling down her front. She sighed and pulled a blade of grass out of a brown hedge. It had the pleasing, dead, wet flavour of wet winter grass. She walked slower, chewing grass, her mind pitched back to the scent of summer and the first touching of hands in a greener grass. And now she was early, very early, she sighed. She stood at the corner and arranged her furs. The little imitation sealskin tippet and the muff to match that she had bought on an expedition to Oxford Street. She supposed, against her better nature, she was a creature of luxury, what with the sealskin tippet and the box of coloured Turkish delight. Red and yellow, like the lights of Oxford Street, these burned still, and the recollection of a visit, her first, with the play at the Lyceum, and a night in a hotel. It made you feel unsettled. It was all very well, the school, and the lectures, and the concerts and parties at the de Veres’, all very well but – Against the hedge she tried positions, with muff, without. Because Elegance was a secret ambition. At night she lay with her hands above her head, so that her fingers, on waking, would look long, and interesting, and white.