came, in a rage, looking splendid.  ’That footman put out everything just as if I were a baby—­asked me for suspenders to fasten on my socks; hung the things on a chair in order, as if I couldn’t find out for myself what to put on first; turned the tongues of my shoes out!—­curled them over!’ Then Derek looked at me and said:  ’Do they do that for you?—­And poor old Gaunt, who’s sixty-six and lame, has three shillings a week to buy him everything.  Just think of that!  If we had the pluck of flies—­’ And he clenched his fists.  But Sheila got up, looked hard at me, and said:  ‘That’ll do, Derek.’  Then he put his hand on my arm and said:  ’It’s only Cousin Nedda!’ I began to love him then; and I believe he saw it, because I couldn’t take my eyes away.  But it was when Sheila sang ’The Red Sarafan,’ after dinner, that I knew for certain.  ’The Red Sarafan’—­it’s a wonderful song, all space and yearning, and yet such calm—­it’s the song of the soul; and he was looking at me while she sang.  How can he love me?  I am nothing—­no good for anything!  Alan calls him a ‘run-up kid, all legs and wings.’  Sometimes I hate Alan; he’s conventional and stodgy—­the funny thing is that he admires Sheila.  She’ll wake him up; she’ll stick pins into him.  No, I don’t want Alan hurt—­I want every one in the world to be happy, happy—­as I am. . . .  The next day was the thunder-storm.  I never saw lightning so near—­and didn’t care a bit.  If he were struck I knew I should be; that made it all right.  When you love, you don’t care, if only the something must happen to you both.  When it was over, and we came out from behind the stack and walked home through the fields, all the beasts looked at us as if we were new and had never been seen before; and the air was ever so sweet, and that long, red line of cloud low down in the purple, and the elm-trees so heavy and almost black.  He put his arm round me, and I let him. . . .  It seems an age to wait till they come to stay with us next week.  If only Mother likes them, and I can go and stay at Joyfields.  Will she like them?  It’s all so different to what it would be if they were ordinary.  But if he were ordinary I shouldn’t love him; it’s because there’s nobody like him.  That isn’t a loverish fancy—­you only have to look at him against Alan or Uncle Stanley or even Dad.  Everything he does is so different; the way he walks, and the way he stands drawn back into himself, like a stag, and looks out as if he were burning and smouldering inside; even the way he smiles.  Dad asked me what I thought of him!  That was only the second day.  I thought he was too proud, then.  And Dad said:  ’He ought to be in a Highland regiment; pity—­great pity!’ He is a fighter, of course.  I don’t like fighting, but if I’m not ready to, he’ll stop loving me, perhaps.  I’ve got to learn.  O Darkness out there, help me!  And Stars, help me!  O God, make me brave, and I will believe in you forever!  If you are the spirit that grows