The next thing she remembered was a moment of terrible unhappiness — it gave her a shock. What happened was that Martin and one of Delia’s brothers and a woman she didn’t even know came up to her and began talking about the train. They kept saying that it wouldn’t do for Delia and Martin to miss the train. Min never knew the woman’s name, but she remembered that she made a great fuss, as though she imagined that the day depended on her. There were always people like that everywhere, trying to boss things. She wanted to tell that woman to mind her own business. All these strangers were taking Martin over. They thought they owned him now.

“The springs of affection are rising.” It would be those people who would say a thing like that, including everybody in their inspirations, everybody, even people who didn’t want to be included. Min thought of that garden. She thought of the green box hedge and the monkey-puzzle tree and the pink and white roses and all the big dark and white star-shaped flowers, and she thought of Delia’s Aunt Mag on the kitchen chair under the cooking-apple tree, and she remembered Delia’s brothers and sister and Delia’s mother, and the white-haired child. She had forgotten nothing of that glittering day, and she saw it all enclosed in a radiant fountain that rushed up through a rain of sunlight to meet with and rejoice with whatever was up there — Heaven, God the Father, the Good Shepherd, everything everybody ever wanted, wonderful prizes, happiness.

Min knew it was only the transfiguration of memory. She was no fool, and she was not likely to mistake herself for a visionary. The lovely fountain was like a mirage, except that in a mirage people saw what they wanted and were starving for, and in the fountain Min saw what she did not want and never had wanted. Why was it nobody ever believed her when she told them she wanted nothing to do with all that hullabaloo? The fortunes of war condemned her to a silence that misrepresented her as thoroughly as the words she was too proud to speak would have done, and she knew all that. Martin’s lightmindedness had changed the course of her life, and there wasn’t one single thing she could do about it. He turned all their lives around. He cared no more about his mother and sisters and what happened to them than if he had been a stranger passing through the house on his way to a far better place, where the people were more interesting.