Her entrance had been abominable⁠—in fact not until she reached the phone had she displayed a shred of poise⁠—and then the test had been over.

They reached New York in March after an expensive and ill-advised week spent in Hot Springs, and Anthony resumed his abortive attempts at fiction.

The lawn started at the beach and ran towards the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sundials and brick walks and burning gardens⁠—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run.

Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red petrol-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard.