tch the candles."

"The women must put on warm cloaks," said Robert.

They trooped indoors for coats and wraps and candles and lanterns. Then,
lighted by a bicycle lamp, they trooped off to the shed to twist wire
round the candles for holders. They clustered round the bench.

"I say," said Julia, "doesn't Cyril look like a pilot on a stormy night!
Oh, I say--!" and she went into one of her hurried laughs.

They all looked at Cyril Scott, who was standing sheepishly in the
background, in a very large overcoat, smoking a large pipe. The
young man was uncomfortable, but assumed a stoic air of philosophic
indifference.

Soon they were busy round a prickly fir-tree at the end of the lawn. Jim
stood in the background vaguely staring. The bicycle lamp sent a beam
of strong white light deep into the uncanny foliage, heads clustered and
hands worked. The night above was silent, dim. There was no wind. In
the near distance they could hear the panting of some engine at the
colliery.

"Shall we light them as we fix them," asked Robert, "or save them for
one grand rocket at the end?"

"Oh, as we do them," said Cyril Scott, who had lacerated his fingers and
wanted to see some reward.

A match spluttered. One naked little flame sprang alight among the dark
foliage. The candle burned tremulously, naked. They all were silent.

"We ought to do a ritual dance! We ought to worship the tree," sang
Julia, in her high voice.

"Hold on a minute. We'll have a little more illumination," said Robert.

"Why yes. We want more than one candle," said Josephine.

But Julia had dropped the cloak in which she was huddled, and with arms
slung asunder was sliding, waving, crouching in a _pas seul_ before the
tree, looking like an animated bough herself.

Jim, who was hugging his pipe in the background, broke into a short,
harsh, cackling laugh.

"Aren't we fools!" he cried. "What? Oh, God's love, aren't we fools!"

"No--why?" cried Josephine, amused but resentful.

But Jim vouchsafed nothing further, only stood like a Red Indian
gripping his pipe.

The beam of the bicycle-lamp moved and fell upon the hands and faces
of the young people, and penetrated the recesses of the secret trees.
Several little tongues of flame clipped sensitive and ruddy on the naked
air, sending a faint glow over the needle foliage. They gave a strange,
perpendicular aspiration in the night. Julia waved slowly in her tree
dance. Jim stood apart, with his legs s