The three, as if humouring a child in its play, feigned a profound ignorance of what Nanna had in hand.
She disappeared, suppressed the giggling on the stairs, and returned, herself in jubilee let loose.

She carried an enormous plate, and on the plate Anne's wedding-cake with all its white terraces and towers, and (a little shattered) the sugar orange blossoms and myrtles of its crown.

She stood it alone on its table of honour, and withdrew abruptly.
The three were stricken dumb by the presence of the bridal thing.

Nanna, listening outside the door, attributed their silence to an appreciation too profound for utterance.
They looked at it, and it looked at them.

Its veil of myrtle, trembling yet with the shock of its entrance, gave it the semblance of movement and of life.