“Yes, before all this.  To be yourself, you know.”

“Myself?”

“All jolly, and without these jerks and jumps.  I wish you could get away.  A fortnight by the sea would do you all the good in the world.”

She knew not what it was in the words “the sea” that caused her suddenly to breathe more deeply.  The sea!...  It was as if, by the mere uttering of them, he had touched some secret spring, brought to fulfilment some spell.  What had he meant by speaking of the sea?...  A fortnight before, had somebody spoken to her of the sea it would have been the sea of Margate, of Brighton, of Southend, that, supplying the image that a word calls up as if by conjuration, she would have seen before her; and what other image could she supply, could she possibly supply, now?...  Yet she did, or almost did, supply one.  What new experience had she had, or what old, old one had been released in her?  With that confused, joyous dinning just beyond the range of physical hearing there had suddenly mingled a new illusion of sound—­a vague, vast pash and rustle, silky and harsh both at once, its tireless voice holding meanings of stillness and solitude compared with which the silence that is mere absence of sound was vacancy.  It was part of her dream, invisible, intangible, inaudible, yet there.  As if he had been an enchanter, it had come into being at the word upon his lips.  Had he other such words?  Had he the Master Word that—­(ah, she knew what the Master Word would do!)—­would make the Vision the Reality and the Reality the Vision?  Deep within her she felt something—­her soul, herself, she knew not what—­thrill and turn over and settle again....

“The sea,” she repeated in a low voice.

“Yes, that’s what you want to set you up—­rather!  Do you remember that fortnight at Littlehampton, you and me and your Aunt?  Jolly that was!  I like Littlehampton.  It isn’t flash like Brighton, and Margate’s always so beastly crowded.  And do you remember that afternoon by the windmill?  I did love you that afternoon, Bessie!"...

He continued to talk, but she was not listening.  She was wondering why the words “the sea” were somehow part of it all—­the pins and brooches of the Museum, the book on her knees, the dream.  She remembered a game of hide-and-seek she had played as a child, in which cries of “Warm, warm, warmer!” had announced the approach to the hidden object.  Oh, she was getting warm—­positively hot....

He had ceased to talk, and was watching her.  Perhaps it was the thought of how he had loved her that afternoon by the windmill that had brought him close to her chair again.  She was aware of his nearness, and closed her eyes for a moment as if she dreaded something.  Then she said quickly, “Is tea nearly ready, Ed?” and, as he turned to the table, took up the book again.

She felt that even to touch that book brought her “warmer.”  It fell open at a page.  She did not hear the clatter Ed made at the table, nor yet the babble his words had evoked, of the pierrots and banjos and minstrels of Margate and Littlehampton.  It was to hear a gladder, wilder tumult that she sat once more so still, so achingly listening....