to escape from it she hurried across the sloping
broken ground, calling out, "Ellen, Ellen!"

She could see that there was no one on the level platform by the
flagstaff, so she took the footpath where it fell below the two lower
towers, and as soon as she had passed the first and could look along the
hillside to the second she stopped. Now she could see Ellen. The girl
was standing on the very top of the grassy mound that supported the
tower, her back resting against the wall, her feet on a shelf that had
formed where the earth had been washed away from the masonry foundations
by the dripping from a ledge above. It was the very place where Marion
had been standing ever so long ago at the moment when Richard had first
moved within her. She had dragged herself up the hill to escape from the
bickerings at Yaverland's End, and had been resting there, looking down
on the peace of the marshes and listening to the unargumentative cry of
the redshanks, and wishing that she might dwell during this time among
such quiet things; and suddenly there came a wind from the sea, and it
was as if a little naked child had been blown into her soul. All that
she felt was a tremor feeble as the first fluttering of some tiny bird,
and yet it changed the world. In that instant she conceived Richard's
spirit as three months before she had conceived his body, and her mind
became subject to the duty of awaiting him with adoration as her flesh
and blood were subject to the duty of nourishing him. Harry, who had
been lord of her life, receded rushingly to a place of secondary
importance, and she transferred her allegiance to this invisible
presence who was possessed of such power over her that even now, when it
could not be seen or touched or heard or imagined, it could make itself
loved. She had stood there in an ecstasy of passion until the sun had
fallen beyond Kerith Island. Then her cold hands had told her that she
must go home for the child's sake; and as if in recognition of this act
of cherishing there had come as she climbed the hill another tremor that
made her cry out with joy.

Ellen must not stand there, or she was bound to hate her. It was
intolerable that this girl who was going to be Richard's wife should
intrude into the sacred places of the woman who had to be content with
being his mother. "Ellen, Ellen!" she shouted, and waved her stick. The
girl clambered down and came towards her with steps that became slower
as she came near