missed as the principle
of blind procreation, became more complex, enigmatic. He had no
increased desire to experience it, with the inevitable loss of personal
liberty; but he began to be conscious of new depths, unexpected
complications, in human relationship.

He was not so sure of himself.

They had moved to the less formal of the rooms used as places of
gathering. The bed in a corner was hung in blue shalloon over ruffled
white muslin, and there was blue at the windows. Against the wall a
clavichord, set aside as obsolete, raised its dusky red ebony box on
grooved legs. Myrtle was seated at it picking out an air from
Belshazzar. She held each note in a silvery vibration that had the
fragility of old age. Ludowika was by the fire, quartered across a
corner; there was no stove, and the wood burning in the opening sent out
frequent, pungent waves of smoke. She coughed and cursed. "Positively,"
she declared, "I'll turn salt like a smoked herring."

She rose, her gaze resting on Howat. "I must go out," she continued;
"breathe." He was strangely reluctant to accompany her, his feet were
leaden. Nevertheless, in a few moments he found himself at her side on
the lawn. Her sophistication had again disappeared, beneath the stars
drawn across the hills, over Myrtle Forge. There was a pause in the
hammering below. "Take me down there," she commanded.

He led the way on a beaten path that dropped sharply to a bridge of hewn
logs crossing the spent water. The Forge, a long shed following the
stream, was open on the opposite side; an enclosure of ruddy, vaporous
gloom with pools of molten colour, clangorous sounds. The bubbling,
white cores of three raised and hooded hearths were incessantly agitated
with long rods by blackened and glistening shapes. At intervals a
flushing rod was withdrawn from a fire and plunged in a trough of water;
a cloud of ghostly steam arose, a forgeman's visage momentarily
illuminated like a copper mask. A grimy lantern was hung above the
anvil, its thin light falling on the ponderous head of the trip hammer
suspended at right angles from a turning cogged shaft projection through
the wall.

The hearths, set in a row beyond the anvil, had at their back an
obscure, mechanical stir, accompanied by the audible suction of squat,
drum bellows. The labour was halted at a fire; half naked anatomies,
herculean shoulders and incredible arms, gathered about its mouth with
hooked bars. An incandescent mass was