THE WINDOW

the bananas, made her think of a trophy fetched
from the bottom of the sea, of Neptune's
banquet, of the bunch that hangs with vine leaves
over the shoulder of Bacchus (in some picture),
among the leopard skins and the torches lolloping
red and gold, . , * Thus brought up suddenly
into the light it seemed possessed of great size
and depth, was like a world in which one could
take one's staff and climb up hills, she thought,
and go down into valleys, and to her pleasure (for
it brought them into sympathy momentarily) she
saw that Augustus too feasted his eyes on the
same plate of fruit, plunged in, broke off a bloom
there, a tassel here, and returned, after feasting,
to his hive. That was his way of looking, different
from hers. But looking together united them.

Now all the candles were lit, and the faces
on both sides of the table were brought nearer by
the candle light, and composed, as they had not
been in the twilight, into a party round a table,
for the night was now shut off by panes of glass,
which, far from giving any accurate view of the
outside world, rippled it so strangely that here,
inside the room, seemed to be order and dry land;
there, outside, a reflection in which things wavered
and vanished, waterily.

Some change at once went through them all,
as if this had really happened, and they were all