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sentimentality was not wise.
    Wayness turned away. She crossed the foyer and went into the parlor, moving on soft feet so as not to disturb the ghosts which everyone believed haunted each of the old houses. The ghosts at this house had always been cool indifferent beings, showing no interest in the lives of the occupants and Wayness had never feared them.
    Nothing had changed; all was as she remembered it, but smaller, as if seen through the wrong end of a telescope. At the front, three bay windows overlooked air, sky, and two miles to the south, the sheer face of the opposite cliff. By standing close to the window and looking down, the water of the fjord below could be glimpsed. The sun Syrene hung low over the cliff and sent dark yellow rays slanting through the windows. The second sun Sing, rubicund and portly, along with its glistening white companion Lorca, had already settled from sight.
    Wayness shivered; the room was cold. She kindled a fire in the fireplace, piling up a careful mound of sea-coal and driftwood. Wayness looked about the room. After the expansiveness of Riverview House, it seemed cramped, though the high ceiling compensated somewhat for the constriction elsewhere. Odd! thought Wayness. She had never noticed this effect before. She wondered whether an entire life spent in such conditions might affect the quality of a person’s thinking. Probably not, she decided; more likely the brain simply ignored the whole situation and did as it saw best. She turned to stand with her back to the fire. To her right a stand supported an Earth-globe; to her left, a similar stand held a globe of Cadwal. During her childhood she had studied these globes for hours on end. When she and Glawen were married, they must have a pair of such globes in their home – perhaps these same two. She coveted none of the other furniture. The pieces, upholstered in dark red and mottled green, were stolid and conventional, each stationed immutably in its ordained place; where it must remain until the end of time, since at Stroma nothing ever changed.
    Wayness corrected herself. Changes had already come to Stroma; others, even more decisive, were on the way. Wayness sighed, saddened by what was about to happen.
    Looking from the window she noticed the approach of her friends along the narrow cliff-hugging way. There were four girls and two young men, all close to Wayness’ own age. She opened the door; they trooped into the foyer, laughing chattering, and calling out gay greetings. All marvelled at the changes which had come over Wayness. Tradence said: “You were always so sober and absorbed in your own thoughts. I often wondered what went on in those reveries.”
    “They were quite innocent,” said Wayness.
    “Too much thinking is a bad habit,” said Sunje Ballinder. “It tends to make one timid.”
    Everyone looked at Wayness, who said: “These are valuable insights; I must take stock of myself one of these days.”
    So the talk went: gossip and reminiscences, but always the six seemed set apart from Wayness by a guarded formality, as if to emphasize that Wayness was no longer one of their own.
    The entire group, Wayness included, seemed infected by an uneasy alertness, which caused all eyes to stray frequently to the wall clock. The reason was simple: in a few minutes the Conservator was to issue a statement which, so it had been hinted, would affect the lives of everyone now resident at Stroma.
    Wayness served hot rum punch to her friends and fostered the fire with nodules of sea-coal. She spoke little, but was content to listen to the conversation, which had fixed upon the forthcoming announcement. The political orientation of her friends became clear. Alyx-Marie and Tancred were Chartist; Tradence, Lanice and Ivar were even more resolutely LPF, and spoke of their creed as ‘Dynamic Humanism.’ Sunje Ballinder, daughter of the redoubtable Warden Ballinder, tall, supple, coolly outrageous in her unconventional attitudes,