Her mind went back, a long, long way, it seemed, to that night at dinner in London when Father first spoke of the house he had taken in the Mendip Hills—sprang it on them, without warning, and before anybody could say Knife he had dumped them down in it, bag and baggage, with the flat locked up in dust-sheets behind them, and nothing in the shape of a town nearer than Wells. Suppose they hadn’t liked it at all, that wouldn’t have mattered to Father, so long as he had his barrows and encampments, and his chosen cronies who drove with professorial absentmindedness battered little secondhand cars about the haunted, windblown heights of the ancient, secretive Hills. It was nothing to him either that he had brought them to an oasis of peace and beauty in an embattled age, where their town-cramped souls were already expanded into twice their former size, and their spirits had grown wings, and their nerves had unkinked themselves and relaxed into quiescence.

Be still, and know that I am God.... The words came suddenly out of nowhere, and Sabrina was surprised, because hers had not been a very religious upbringing. She wondered where she had first heard or read them—Psalms, she decided vaguely—wondered if Hilary had a Bible—idly pursued a faint recollection of one on the bottom shelf by the window—wondered how you went about it to find any certain half dozen words in the Bible—and fell to speculating on how much more important and beautiful the churches seemed in the country than in London. Perhaps it was because country people had more time to think things out quietly, as she was beginning to do, and to observe the loveliness of the world as God had left it, before cities were invented by man. Certainly one had a deep sense of gratitude to Somebody on a day like this, she reflected; one wanted to give thanks for just being born, for the golden warmth of the sun, for the color and fragrance of a garden, for red strawberries in a crystal bowl. Be still, and know that I am God....

Just as the little procession of Mrs. Pilton with the tea-pot and silver urn on a tray, followed by Jennie with a plate of thin bread-and-butter left the house and started across the lawn, an open green four-seater with a solitary man at its wheel turned in at the gate and swept noisily along the drive to the steps, where it drew up with a flourish.

Sabrina’s heart turned clean over. Here was the dream coming true. He had arrived. And there would be tea on the lawn just as she had always planned it, and perhaps a chance to get really acquainted with him, since Father was away at Maesbury for the whole day....