Page:Encounters (Bowen).djvu/39

 The girls retreated.

"Oh no, really, not your daffodils"

"We don't mean"

"Not your daffodils. Miss Murcheson. It wasn't that a bit."

Evidently a false move on her part. She was bewildered by them; could not fathom the depths of their cinema-bred romanticism.

Doris had put away the photograph and stood with her back to the others, fingering the ornaments on the chimney-piece.

"There are lots of things," she said rapidly, "that you only feel because of people. That's the only reason things are there for, I think. You wouldn't notice them otherwise, or care about them. It's only sort of" She stopped. Her ears glowed crimson underneath her hat.

"Association," they sighed, ponderously.

"That's exactly what's the matter," cried Miss Murcheson. "We've got all the nice, fresh, independent, outside things so smeared over with our sentimentalities and prejudices and—associations—that we can't see them anyhow but as part of ourselves. That's how you're—we're missing things and spoiling