It was a summer evening; the sun was setting; the sky was blue still, but tinged¹ with gold, as if a thin veil of gauze hung over it, and here and there in the gold-blue amplitude² an island of cloud lay suspended. In the fields the trees stood majestically³ caparisoned, with their innumerable leaves gilt⁵. Sheep and cows, pearl white and parti-coloured, lay recumbent or munched⁸ their way through the half transparent⁹ grass. An edge of light surrounded everything. A red-gold fume¹⁰ rose from the dust on the roads. Even the little red brick villas¹¹ on the high roads had become porous¹², incandescent¹³ with light, and the flowers in cottage gardens, lilac and pink like cotton dresses, shone veined as if lit from within. Faces of people standing¹⁵ at cottage doors or padding along pavements showed the same red glow as they fronted the slowly sinking sun.

Eleanor came out of her flat and shut the door. Her face was lit up by the glow of the sun as it sank over London, and for a moment she was dazzled and looked out over the roofs and spires¹⁷ that lay beneath. There were people talking inside her room, and she wanted to have a word with her nephew alone. North, her brother Morris’s son, had just come back from Africa, and she had scarcely seen him alone. So many people had dropped in that evening — Miriam Parrish; Ralph Pickersgill; Antony Wedd; her niece Peggy, and on top of them all, that very talkative man, her friend Nicholas Pomjalovsky, whom they called Brown for short. She had scarcely had a word with North alone. For a moment they stood in the bright square of sunshine that fell on the stone floor of the passage. Voices were still talking within. She put her hand on his shoulder.