Suddenly, just before Axel turned away, the forward edge of the throng appeared on top of the second crest, and swarmed down across the plain.  What astounded Axel was the incredible distance it had covered while out of sight.  The figures were now twice the size, each one clearly within sight.

Quickly, Axel stepped from the terrace, selected a time flower from the garden and tore it from the stem.  As it released its compacted light, he returned to the terrace.  When the flower had shrunk to a frozen pearl in his palm he looked out at the plain; with relief saw that the army had retreated to the horizon again.

Then he realised that the horizon was much nearer than previously, and that what he assumed to be the horizon was the first crest.

When he joined the Countess on their evening walk he told her nothing of this, but she could see behind his casual unconcern and did what she could to dispel his worry.

Walking down the steps, she pointed to the time garden.  “What a wonderful display, Axel.  There are so many flowers still.”

Axel nodded, smiling to himself at his wife’s attempt to reassure him.  Her use of ‘still’ had revealed her own unconscious anticipation of the end.  In fact, a mere dozen flowers remained of the many hundreds that had grown in the garden, and several of these were little more than buds – only three or four were fully grown.  As they walked down to the lake, the Countess’s dress rustling across the cool turf, he tried to decide whether to pick the larger flowers first or leave them to the end.  Strictly, it would be better to give the smaller flowers additional time to grow and mature, and this advantage would be lost if he retained the larger flowers to the end, as he wished to do, for the final repulse.  However, he realised that it mattered little either way; the garden would soon die and the smaller flowers required far longer than he could give them to accumulate their compressed cores of time.  During his entire lifetime he had failed to notice a single evidence of growth among the flowers.  The larger blooms had always been mature, and none of the buds had shown the slightest development.