doors and
windows of the cattle-sheds looked out under the thick brows of their
thatched eaves at the strange fluctuating wine-like light as if they
were consciously preserving their occupants from the night's magic. As
she walked to the garden's edge, the crickets chirped in the long grass
and the ballet of the bats drove back and forwards in long streaks. The
round red moon hung on the breast of a flawless night, whose feet were
hidden in an amethystine haze that covered the marshes and the sea, and
changed the lit liners going from Tilbury to floating opals; and within
the house was Richard. All was beauty.

Surely it would be given to her to deserve to be his mother? She stood
there in an ecstasy that was hardly at all excitement, until it blew
cold and she remembered that she had left the fire unmended, and went
back to the house.

She went in by the kitchen, and was amazed to see that the larder door
was open and giving out a faint ray of light. She pulled it open and saw
the other child standing on a chair and spooning cherry jam out of the
jar into his mouth. A candle, which it had put on the shelf below it,
threw on the ceiling an enormous shadow of its large, jerry-built skull.
It turned on her a pale and filthy face and dropped the jar, so that
gobs of jam fell on its pinafore, the paper-covered shelf, the chair,
the floor. She lifted the child down and struck it. It gave her the most
extraordinary pleasure to strike it. She struck it three times, and each
time it was as good as drinking wine. Then she fell forward on her knees
and covered her face with her hands. The child ceased to howl and put
its jammy arms forgivingly about her while she wept, but its touch only
reminded her how delicious it had been to beat it. Still, she submitted
to its embrace, and muttered in abasement: "Oh, lovey, mummy shouldn't
have done that!"

The child was puzzled, for it knew it ought not to have stolen the jam,
and as always, it was so full of love that it could not believe that
anybody had behaved badly to it. There was nothing to do but to give it
a kiss and take it off to bed. When she saw its horrid little body
stripped for the bath, heat ran through her throat, and she remembered
again how exquisite it had been to hurt him, and she speculated whether
very much force would be needed to kill it. All the time it knelt at her
knee saying its prayers she was wondering whether, when he was a little
older, he would not get