Stella appeared and cried out a gay welcome. She was wearing a handsome scarlet housecoat, and her dark braids fell down her back. In the living room her mother was playing with the baby. The room looked like an illustration from a magazine; it was all cream leather and red carpet. Through the cream-shaded windows a stretch of sere drying veld looked in and disowned the alien. Martha felt a sharp dislocation in her sense of what was fitting, as she always did with Mrs Barbazon, who, with her careful dark eyes, seemed a stray from the capitals of Europe.