110

Behind the shoulder of the Mountain the sun had set
stilly gone down in a waveless transparent sea of gold. From a pasture somewhere up the
slope a tinkle of cow-bells sounded; a puff of smoke hung over
a farm in the valley, trailed on the pure air and was gone. In the
few minutes in the clear light that is all shadow, fields and woods were outlined for
a few minutes with exquisite precision; then the sudden twilight
the hills blotted out everything, and the little house turned
gray and spectral under its distorted apple-branches.

Charity's heart contracted. The first fall of night after
a day of radiance often gave her a sense of hidden menace: it
was like looking out over the world as it would be when love had
gone from it; and she wondered if some day she would sit in the
same place and watch in vain for her lover...

His bicycle-bell sounded down the lane, and in a minute
she was at the gate and his eyes were laughing into hers. In
the dusk they walked back through the long grass, and pushed
open the door behind the house. The room at first seemed quite
dark and they had to grope their way in hand in hand. Through
the window-frame the sky looked light by contrast, and above
the black mass of asters in the earthen jar one white star
glimmered like a moth.

"There was such a lot to do at the last minute," Harney
was saying, "and I had to drive down to Creston to meet some
one who's come to stay with my cousin." He had his arms about
her, and his kisses were in her hair and on her lips. Under

his touch things deep down in her seemed to struggle to the
light and spring up like flowers in sunshine. She twisted
her fingers into his, and they sat down side by side on the
improvised couch. She hardly heard his excuses for being
doubles late: in his absence a thousand possibilities tormented her,
but as soon as he appeared she ceased to wonder where he had
come from, what had delayed him, who had kept him from her.
It seemed as if the places he had been in, and the people he
had been with, must cease to exist when he left them, just as
her own life seemed suspended in his absence.

relatively

He continued, now, to talk to her eagerly and gaily,
deploring his lateness, grumbling at the demands on his time,
and good humouredly mimicking Miss Hatchard's benevolent
agitation.

"She sent Miles to ask Mr. Royall to speak at the
luncheon tomorrow: I didn't know till it was done." Charity
was silent, and he added: "It's just well. No one else could
have done it."

Charity made no answer: she did not care what part her
guardian played in the tomorrow's ceremonies. Like all the
other figures peopling her meagre world he had grown non-
existent to her. She had even put off hating him.