Mary Olivier: a Life

The room held her close, cold and white, a nun's cell. If you counted the window-place it was shaped like a cross. The door at the foot, the window at the head, bookshelves at the end of each arm. A kitchen lamp with a tin reflector, on a table, stood in the breast of the cross. Its flame was so small that she had to turn it on to her work like a lantern.

"Dumpetty, dumpetty dum. Tell them that Bion is dead; he is dead, young Bion, the shepherd. And with him music is dead and Dorian poetry perished -- "