From a little after two o'clock untilalmost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat inwhat Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called itthat — a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened forforty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that lightand moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as thesun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed withyellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks ofthe dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as windmight have blown them.

Therewas a wistaria vine blooming for the second time that summer on a woodentrellis before one window, into which sparrows came now and then in randomgusts, making a dry vivid dusty sound before going away: and opposite Quentin,Miss Coldfield in the eternal black which she had worn for forty-three yearsnow, whether for sister, father, or nothusband none knew, sitting so boltupright in the straight hard chair that was so tall for her that her legs hungstraight and rigid as if she had iron shinbones' and ankles, clear of the floorwith that air of impotent and static rage like children's feet, and talking inthat grim haggard amazed Voice until at last listening would renege andhearing-sense self-confound and the long-dead object of her impotent yetindomitable frustration would appear, as though by outraged recapitulationevoked, quiet inattentive and harmless, out of the biding and dreamy andvictorious dust.

Hervoice would not cease, it would just vanish. There would be the dimcoffin-smelling gloom sweet and oversweet with the twice-bloomed wistariaagainst the outer wall by the savage quiet September sun impacted distilled andhyperdistilled, into which came now and then the loud cloudy flutter of the