rous were their fluttering rushes, so tenderly
prolonged their soft sentinel callings. Now that the weather was really
warm, so that joy of life was in the voles, they found those succulent
creatures of an extraordinarily pleasant flavour, and on them each pair
was bringing up a family of exceptionally fine little owls, very solemn,
with big heads, bright large eyes, and wings as yet only able to fly
downwards. There was scarcely any hour from noon of the day (for some
of them had horns) to the small sweet hours when no one heard them,
that they forgot to salute the very large, quiet, wingless owl whom they
could espy moving about by day above their mouse-runs, or preening her
white and sometimes blue and sometimes grey feathers morning and evening
in a large square hole high up in the front wall. And they could not
understand at all why no swift depredating graces nor any habit of long
soft hooting belonged to that lady-bird.

On the evening of the day when she received that early morning call, as
soon as dusk had fallen, wrapped in a long thin cloak, with black lace
over her dark hair, Audrey Noel herself fluttered out into the lanes, as
if to join the grave winged hunters of the invisible night. Those far,
continual sounds, not stilled in the country till long after the
sun dies, had but just ceased from haunting the air, where the late
May-scent clung as close as fragrance clings to a woman's robe. There
was just the barking of a dog, the boom of migrating chafers, the song
of the stream, and of the owls, to proclaim the beating in the heart of
this sweet Night. Nor was there any light by which Night's face could be
seen; it was hidden, anonymous; so that when a lamp in a cottage threw
a blink over the opposite bank, it was as if some wandering painter had
wrought a picture of stones and leaves on the black air, framed it in
purple, and left it hanging. Yet, if it could only have been come at,
the Night was as full of emotion as this woman who wandered, shrinking
away against the banks if anyone passed, stopping to cool her hot face
with the dew on the ferns, walking swiftly to console her warm heart.
Anonymous Night seeking for a symbol could have found none better than
this errant figure, to express its hidden longings, the fluttering,
unseen rushes of its dark wings, and all its secret passion of revolt
against its own anonymity....

At Monkland Court, save for little Ann, the morning passed but dumbly,
everyone