Summer infects the townsfolk with the usual maladies, such as hay fever and love. Zara fares worse; she contracts a case of nostalgia.

It's all very well for Rina to moon about in a puddle of sentimentality; presumably the soap fumes get to her brain; but what excuse does a sensible young woman have to sit in her room doing her steady, paid work, and pine for the days of starving in a badly thatched cottage? Zara likes it here. The roofs leak less, and if she's still surrounded by idiots, at least they're educated idiots.

It's only in these days of high summer, with the scent of flowers and sun-dried grass floating up through the grimy streets, that she has fits of melancholy. She finds herself gazing out the window, southward over the rooftops, thinking of green-gold fields. Of trees.

Things were simpler then. Much duller, much less satisfying, more difficult, but simpler. She hadn't learned how to think outside herself, the world no bigger than she could see standing in one place; she hadn't learned how it felt to lose an argument, or break something she couldn't mend, or walk through a dark alley at night, or fall in love.