or was ajar, a room was empty. Feeling his way forward, with
the tips of his fingers, travelling rapidly, like a blind man, anxious
lest Ursula should come upstairs, he found another door. There, with
his preternaturally fine sense alert, he listened. He heard someone
moving in bed. This would be she.

Softly now, like one who has only one sense, the tactile sense, he
turned the latch. It clicked. He held still. The bed-clothes rustled.
His heart did not beat. Then again he drew the latch back, and very
gently pushed the door. It made a sticking noise as it gave.

'Ursula?' said Gudrun's voice, frightened. He quickly opened the door
and pushed it behind him.

'Is it you, Ursula?' came Gudrun's frightened voice. He heard her
sitting up in bed. In another moment she would scream.

'No, it's me,' he said, feeling his way towards her. 'It is I, Gerald.'

She sat motionless in her bed in sheer astonishment. She was too
astonished, too much taken by surprise, even to be afraid.

'Gerald!' she echoed, in blank amazement. He had found his way to the
bed, and his outstretched hand touched her warm breast blindly. She
shrank away.

'Let me make a light,' she said, springing out.

He stood perfectly motionless. He heard her touch the match-box, he
heard her fingers in their movement. Then he saw her in the light of a
match, which she held to the candle. The light rose in the room, then
sank to a small dimness, as the flame sank down on the candle, before
it mounted again.

She looked at him, as he stood near the other side of the bed. His cap
was pulled low over his brow, his black overcoat was buttoned close up
to his chin. His face was strange and luminous. He was inevitable as a
supernatural being. When she had seen him, she knew. She knew there was
something fatal in the situation, and she must accept it. Yet she must
challenge him.

'How did you come up?' she asked.

'I walked up the stairs--the door was open.'

She looked at him.

'I haven't closed this door, either,' he said. She walked swiftly
across the room, and closed her door, softly, and locked it. Then she
came back.

She was wonderful, with startled eyes and flushed cheeks, and her plait
of hair rather short and thick down her back, and her long, fine white
night-dress falling to her feet.

She saw that his boots were all clayey, even his trousers were
plastered with clay. And she wondered if he had made footprints all the
way up. He was a very s