llows
leaning out above the water on the white walls on the island were
somehow in harmony. That was a day most happily full of things to
notice. Surely this was a world to stay in, not to leave before one
need! Ah, but it was now.

If to-morrow they started on such a walk the path by the river would be
impassable by reason of the shadow of a tall, dark man that would fall
across it, and she would not be able to sit and watch the dancers
because in any moment of stillness she would be revisited by thoughts of
the madness that had made her say those dreadful things, at the thought
of which she laid her spread hand across her mouth, that had made her so
rude to the good old man who was their only friend. Again she trembled
with hate of Yaverland, a hate that seemed to swell out from her heart.
She knew, as she would have known if a flame had destroyed her sight,
that the turn life had taken had robbed her of the beauty of the world
and was bringing her existence down to this ugly terminal focus, this
moment when she sat in this cold kitchen, its cheap print and plaster
the colour of uncleaned teeth, and tried to pluck up her energy to put
on wet shoes and go through streets full of indifferent people and
greased with foul weather to throw herself over a bridge on to rocks.
She rose and felt for her shoes that she might go out to die....

Then at the door there came his knock. There was no doubt but that it
was his knock. Who else in all the time that these two women had lived
there had knocked so? Two loud, slow knocks, expectant of an immediate
opening yet without fuss: the way men ask for things. Peace and
apprehension mingled in her. She crossed her hands on her breast, sighed
deeply, and cast down her head. It seemed good, as she went to the door
and reluctantly turned the handle, that she was in her stockinged feet;
her noiseless steps gave her a feeling of mischief and confidence as if
there was to follow a game of pursuits and flights into a darkness.

His male breadth blocked the door. She smiled to see how huge he was,
and stood obediently in the silence he evidently desired, for he neither
greeted her nor made any movement to enter, but remained looking down
into her face. His deep breath measured some long space of time. Her
eyes wandered past him and to the little huddled houses, the laurels
standing round the lamp, their leaves bobbing under the straight silver
rake of the lamplit rain; and she marvelled th