He began to climb the mulberry tree.

Wait for me, Elyot, she said.

So they both began to climb. She was determined. The light failing inside the tree, inside its thick foliage, she looked up desperately not to lose sight completely of his heels. His panting, higher, was discordant with her own. Their shoes laboured over bark. It was a long way up, in a desperation that was very close to exhilaration, even when she tore her knee.

I’m at the top, he called. I can see, I can see as far as Wales.

When she pushed up her scratched face, he did not resent it. They were both close against the sky. Their silence was mutual. So that Connie was afraid to speak, and breathless, she clung on afraid and a little giddy to the bending bough, tried to obliterate herself in Elyot’s silence. She was quite content, because she was Connie Tiarks, with the mere privilege of existence. He allowed her to keep this, largely, with the generosity of his sex. Afterwards, on the way down, he even thought of suggesting to Eden that Connie was not a bad sort.

That was before she began, it happened at first slowly, her fingers slipping as surely as a fruit off its twig, her dress the downward flare that brushed his face, he saw, the rushing was the white dress, the head that tumbled with the sickness of a fruit, her voice stretched out in air. For half an hour or more, and at once, in two seconds, he knew that Connie was falling out of the mulberry tree. He shouted at her. Through his anxiety he felt annoyed. Because this was just the sort of thing that Connie Tiarks would do. Connie was a girl. She was sent to exasperate him.

Connie lay on the ground, on her back. Out of her purple face, not much paler than the mulberries that she crushed, came a muffled and protracted kind of screaming.

Connie ! he called, as he slithered from the tree.

Now he was very much afraid. He wanted very much to run away, from what had ceased to be the known Connie, from this uncontrolled and frightening object screaming purple in the face.

Bending down, he began to shake her.

Shut up, Connie! he shouted roughly. Listen, Connie! he almost screamed.

Because you had to scream, to make an impression on that purple face.

I’ve broken my back, Connie moaned.

It came pumping through her lips. It hit him sickly. He could have cried. But not for Connie, for himself. It had happened somehow to himself. He had to do, do, he had to do something, he felt.

I’ll give you my knife, Connie, he said. If only you’ll get up.

If only he could escape this painful sensation of being exposed to the unexpected.

She continued to moan, as he sat and watched her, though her face paler, her lips quieter, she had become reduced to a quiet gasping. Then perhaps she would really die after all. Vaguely he saw them dressed in black. In the cemetery the soil smelt new when they dug it up for funerals.