TIME PASSES

another, and lunged and plunged in the darkness
or the daylight (for night and day, month and
year ran shapelessly together) in idiot games,
until it seemed as if the universe were battling
and tumbling, in brute confusion and wanton
lust aimlessly by itself.

In spring the garden urns, casually filled with
wind-blown plants, were gay as ever. Violets
came and daffodils. But the stillness and the
brightness of the day were as strange as the chaos
and tumult of night, with the trees standing there,
and the flowers standing there, looking before
them, looking up, yet beholding nothing, eyeless,
and thus terrible.

8

Thinking no harm, for the family would not
come, never again, some said, and the house would
be sold at Michaelmas perhaps, Mrs. McNab
stooped and picked a bunch of flowers to take
home with her. She laid them on the table
while she dusted. She was fond of flowers. It
was a pity to let them waste. Suppose the house
were sold (she stood arms akimbo in front of the
looking-glass) it would want seeing to—it would.
There it had stood all these years without a soul
in it. The books and things were mouldy, for,
what with the war and help being hard to get,
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