Seeing the house, moving through its rooms, I knew it belonged to Esme(e). Her essence like her scent pervaded there and governed with the light hand of skill.
        There was a carven box not large which belonged to her resting on a writing desk before a window. It was of some exotic wood, mahogany or something from Hawaii. It was Esme(e)'s, but I did not know what she kept within it. Draperies traced the casements and the heavy frames of beds. Wardrobes lined the walls as pictures formed lines throughout the halls.
        Galleries whispered of her past and theirs and when I stood in 1looking to the smooth green country they told me, in scattered partial phrases tattered by the broken air, what they knew of her, what they dared. I could not hear enough, the voices spread upon the stone and thinned through airy rivers.
        I could not hear what I needed but saw momentary a fading token a slender growing being dressed in simple elegance with long hair loosened.
        White lilies, black bulls.
        Did Esme(e) hear the voices without ceasing?
        The songs and renunciations of bones were things always known to Cleo. And Violet did speak of her sister though the voice she used then was more soft even than those tones which brought her reflections to us in the meadow where the women sat in fond informal figure composing 1 portrait not for me or themselves exclusively.
        They knew what they did.
        Oh yes, they knew.