THE WAVES 
on a pocket-handkerchief on the gravel. Let them count 
out their tortoise-shells, their red admirals and cabbage 
whites. But let me be unseen. I am green as a yew tree 
in the shade of the hedge. My hair is made of leaves. 1 
am rooted to the middle of the earth. My body is a stalk. 
I press the stalk. A drop oozes from the hole at the mouth 
and slowly, thickly, grows larger and larger. Now some- 
thing pink passes the eyehole. Now an eye-beam is slid 
through the chink. Its beam strikes me. I am a boy in a 
grey flannel suit. She has found me. I am struck on the 
nape of the neck. She has kissed me. All is shattered.” 
“I was running,” said Jinny, ‘after breakfast. I saw 
leaves moving in a hole in the hedge. I thought ‘ That is a 
bird on its nest” I parted them and looked; but there 
was no bird on a nest. The leaves went on moving. I was 
frightened. 1 ran past Susan, past Rhoda, and Neville and 
Bernard in the tool-house talking. I cried as I ran, faster 
and faster. What moved the leaves? What moves my 
heart, my legs? And I dashed in here, seeing you green 
as a bush, like a branch, very still, Louis, with your eyes fixed. 
‘Is he dead?” I thought, and kissed you, with my heart 
jumping under my pink frock like the leaves, which go on 
moving, though there is nothing to move them. Now I 
smell geraniums ; I smell earth mould. I dance. I ripple. 
I am thrown over you like a net of light. I lie quivering 
flung over you.” 
“ Through the chink in the hedge,” said Susan, “ I saw 
her kiss him. I raised my head from my flower-pot and 
looked through a chink in the hedge. I saw her kiss him. 
I saw them, Jinny and Louis, kissing. Now I will wrap my 
agony inside my pocket-handkerchief. It shall be screwed 
tight into a ball. I will go to the beech wood alone, before 
lessons, I will not sit at a table, doing sums. I will not 
sit next Jinny and next Louis. I will take my anguish and 
lay it upon the roots under the beech trees. I will examine 
it and take it between my fingers. They will not find me. 
I shall eat nuts and peer for eggs through the brambles and