without even the justification of being a church worker and therefore
having official intelligence about immortality. Her lips were sealed
with inexpressiveness when she talked to anyone except Richard. She
could not talk to strangers. She could not even talk to Ellen, with whom
she ought to have been linked with intimacy by their common love for
Richard, with whom she must become intimate if Richard's future was to
be happy.

Her eyes sought for Ellen in the ruins, but she was not visible.
Probably she had gone into one of the towers where her dreams could not
be overseen and was imagining how lovely it would be to come here with
Richard. It must be wonderful to be Richard's sweetheart. Marion had
seen him often before as the lover of women, but he had never believed
in his own passion for any of them, and therefore there had always been
something desperate about his courtship of them, like the temper of a
sermon against unbelief delivered by a priest who is haunted by
sceptical arguments. But to a woman whom he really loved he would be as
dignified as befitted one who came as an ambassador from life itself,
and gay as was allowed to one who received guarantees that the fair
outward show of the world is no lie; in all the trivialities of
courtship he would show his perfect quality without embarrassment. She
was angered that she would not be able to see him thus. There struck
through her an insane regret that being his mother she could not also be
his wife. But this was greed, for she had had her own good times, and
Harry had been the most wonderful of sweethearts.

There had been a June day on this very hill.... She had been standing by
the towers talking to Bob Girvan for a few minutes, and when she had
left him she had felt so happy at the show of flowering hawthorn trees
that stood red and white all the way down the inland slope of the ridge
that she began to run and leap down the hill. But before she had gone
far, Harry had walked out towards her from one of the hawthorns. She had
felt confused because he had seen her running, and began to walk stiffly
and to scowl. "Good morning, Marion," he had said. "Good morning," she
had answered, feeling very grown-up because she had no longer bobbed to
the squire. He told her, looking intently at her and speaking in a
queer, strained voice, that he had found a great split in the trunk of
the white hawthorn, and asked her if she would like to see it. She said,
"Yes." It str