The penalty of being grown up was that you saw things like this photograph as they really were. She sighed again as she swung her feet to the floor. Polly had to admit that he had been both clever and lucky. The only person in that field must have been the photographer. The shapes she used to take for people were only too clearly dark clumps of the dark hedge behind the blaze. The fire must have been spreading, since there was smoke in the air, and more smoke enveloping the high hemlock plant in the front, but there were no people in it. Here, now, she could see it was simply a large colour photograph, three feet by two feet, taken at dusk, of some hay bales burning in a field. There had even been a horse in it sometimes. Other times, they had been shrouded in the rising smoke. There had been times when you could see the figures quite clearly. Dark figures had seemed to materialise out of its dark centre – strong, running dark figures – always at least four of them, racing to beat out the flames in the foreground. There had been a time, some years back, when she had gazed at that picture and thought it marvellous. Before she swung her feet across to get on with her packing, she looked up at the picture above the bed. She rather thought she had read it after all, some time ago. Polly sighed and laid her book face down on her bed. Allegro vivace 1 A dead sleep came over me And from my horse I fell
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