She would sit, with her hands folded quietly on her lap, her large black eyes watching, watching, watching.
It was odd, indeed, how, instantly, all the children in the garden were aware of her entrance.

She, on her part, would appear to regard none of them, and yet would see them all.

Perched on her seat she surveyed the gardens always with the same gaze of abstracted interest, watching the clear, decent paths across whose grey background at the period of this episode, the October leaves, golden, flaming, dun, gorgeous and shrivelled, fell through the still air, whirled, and with a little sigh of regret, one might fancy, sank and lay dead.

The October colours, a faint haze of smoky mist, the pale blue of the distant sky, the brown moist earth, were gentle, mild, washed with the fading year's regretful tears; the cries of the children, the rhythmic splash of the fountain throbbed behind the colours like some hidden orchestra behind the curtain at the play; the statues in the garden, like fragments of the white bolster clouds that swung so lazily from tree to tree; had no meaning in that misty air beyond the background that they helped to fill.

The year, thus idly, with so pleasant a melancholy, was slipping into decay.
Sarah would watch.