THE WAVES 
way, moving all together, now dividing, now coming 
together.” 
“Those are yellow words, those are fiery words,” said 
Jinny. “I should like a fiery dress, a yellow dress, a fulvous 
dress to wear in the evening.” 
“ Each tense,” said Neville, “ means differently. There 
is an order in this world; there are distinctions, there are 
differences in this world, upon whose verge I step. For 
this is only a beginning.” 
“ Now Miss Hudson,” said Rhoda, * has shut the book. 
Now the terror is beginning. Now taking her lump of 
chalk she draws figures, six, seven, eight, and then a cross 
and then a line on the blackboard. What is the answer ? 
The others look; they look with understanding. Louis 
writes ; Susan writes ; Neville writes ; Jinny writes ; even 
Bernard has now begun to write. But I cannot write, I 
see only figures. The others are handing in their answers, 
one by one. Now it is my turn. But I have no answer. 
The others are allowed to go. They slam the door. Miss 
Hudson goes. I am left alone to find an answer. The 
figures mean nothing now. Meaning has gone. The clock 
ticks. The two hands are convoys marching through a 
desert. The black bars on the clock face are green oases. 
The long hand has marched ahead to find water. The other, 
painfully stumbles among hot stones in the desert. It will 
die in the desert. The kitchen door slams. Wild dogs 
bark far away. Look, the loop of the figure is beginning to 
fill with time ; it holds the world in it. I begin to draw a 
figure and the world is looped in it, and I myself am outside 
the loop; which I now join—so—and seal up, and make 
entire. The world is entire, and I am outside of it, crying, 
¢ Oh save me, from being blown for ever outside the loop of 
time!’ ” 
* There Rhoda sits staring at the blackboard,” said Louis, 
“in the schoolroom, while we ramble off, picking here a 
bit of thyme, pinching here a leaf of southernwood while 
Bernard tells a story. Her shoulder-blades meet across her 
I$