But for Eden it was three detached weeks with which she did not connect herself, she had ceased to exist as Eden Standish, either sitting at mahogany in the house of Aubrey Silk, or lying in a bed in an Ealing villa watching through pain a pale blind. In Switzerland she was now this sombre figure, to whom they brought tea beneath a palm, and the rich Swiss cakes, to which she helped herself with a little pair of plated tongs, in themselves a symbol of remoteness, those stupid little tongs, humorous, touching, part of the kindness of Aubrey Silk, but as a luxury, not indispensable. At the end of three weeks she would dispense with tongs, resuming her personal dimensions. At the time, though, she was dimensionless. She was leading the kind of life she would not ordinarily lead. She lay in bed till lunchtime and listened to the radiators of an expensive Swiss hotel. Beyond the window, the landscape, analogous to the hotel itself, the sumptuous, snowy mountains, the evergreens decorously laden with snow. None of this landscape ever quite escaped from the influence of the radiators. It suffocated, gently, slowly, luxuriously. You found yourself enjoying it, in spite of better judgement. This was momentarily shelved.

Eden Standish was resting. The manager of the hotel bent above her chair, his bald, alpine head, frosted at the ears, and asked her if she was enjoying her Kur. So that she acquired an aura of distinction, her pale face, her dark eyes, whether she liked or not, they forced it on her, they forced her apart from the healthy, mere animal-spirited horde that fell about the snow at winter sports. She did not resist. At the time she could not resist. Even if the corner of her mouth drooped in self-critical irony.

Adelaide Blenkinsop said – it was their first moment of conversation – that Switzerland was the only spot on the globe in which she could make her mind a blank.

Adelaide ignored the extent of her capacity, but at least it was an opening conversational gambit.

A large, white-skinned woman, Adelaide was also reminiscent in her forms of the Swiss landscape, that could alter in the night, that would drift up against the sides of houses, or melt, or melt. She was very white, soft. She had a kind of full and frilled elegance like the snow drooping from the eaves of houses. She settled on you like snow, or on her own chaise-longue, wrapped in shawls against the afternoon air, offering a soft hand.

Indifferent at first to Adelaide, Eden let herself be drawn in. Into the other’s lack of prejudice. Because Adelaide was completely without prejudice of any sort, you discovered, eating chocolates with her in her bedroom, or driving with her in her sleigh. She wanted very definitely to impress this, that she was emancipated, open to ideas. She hung rather fearfully on your reply, afraid you might push her back beyond the fringe of her aspiration, where for Adelaide lived despair.