out the lights the darkness was brightly painted with pictures of the
moonlit temple; one everywhere she turned her eyes. And once, when she
was far gone into drowsiness, she woke herself by sitting up in bed and
crying acidly: "And do you think we will have to spend every night
searching for your mother, Richard?" But very soon she slept.

She woke suddenly and with her mind at attention, as if someone had
whispered into her ear. She sat up and looked through the great window
into that not quite full-bodied light of a day that was overcast and
advanced past its dawn only by an hour or two. There was no one in the
farmyard. Yet it came back to her that she had been called by the sound
of men's voices; of Richard's voice, she could be almost sure, for there
was a filament of pleasure trailing across her consciousness. There was
no reason why he should be out of doors at this hour, before the family
had been called to breakfast, unless the search for Marion had been
unsuccessful. She jumped out of bed and washed and dressed and ran
downstairs, leaving her hair loose about her shoulders because she
begrudged the time for pinning it when he needed her comfort. Mabel, the
parlour-maid, was coming out of the dining-room with an empty tray in
her hand. One corner of her apron-bib flapped loose and there was a smut
on her face. Ellen knew that Marion had not been found, for if she had
been in the house, alive or dead, the girl would not have dared to look
like that. They passed in silence, but exchanged a look of horror.

There was no one in the dining-room but Roger and Poppy. Poppy was
sitting in an armchair at the hearth, where she had evidently spent the
night. Her uniform was unbuttoned half-way down her square bust; and on
the arms of the chair there rested two objects that looked like sections
of dried viscera, but which Ellen remembered to have seen labelled as
pads in hair-dressers' windows. Roger was kneeling before her, his head
on her lap, and weeping bitterly. She was stroking his hair kindly
enough, though her eyes were dwelling on the teapot and ham on the
breakfast-table. The French window was swinging open, admitting air that
had the chill of dawn upon it; and outside on the gravel path stood
Richard, listening to a bearded old fisherman in oilskins. She hovered
about the threshold and heard the old man saying: "'Tes no question o'
you putting yourselves about to look for her now. Mostly you don't hear
nothin'