t,
emphasised every minute of the solemn ticking clock--Mary suddenly burst
into tears, choked over a glass of water, and was led from the room.
Jeremy ate his beef and rice pudding in silence, except that once or
twice in a low, hoarse voice whispered: "Pass the mustard, please," or
"Pass the salt, please." Miss Jones, watching his white face and the
tremble of his upper lip, longed to say something to comfort him, but
wisely held her peace.

After dinner Jeremy collected Hamlet and went to the conservatory. This,
like so many other English conservatories, was a desolate and desperate
little place, where boxes of sand, dry corded-looking bulbs, and an
unhappy plant or two languished, forgotten and forlorn. It had been
inherited with the house many years ago, and, at first, the Coles had
had the ambition to make it blaze with colour, to grow there the most
marvellous grapes, the richest tomatoes, and even--although it was
a little out of place in the house of a clergyman of the Church
of England--the most sinister of orchids. Very quickly the little
conservatory had been abandoned; the heating apparatus had failed, the
plants had refused to grow, the tomatoes never appeared, the bulbs would
not burst into colour.

For Jeremy the place had had always an indescribable fascination. When
he was very young there had been absolute trust that things would grow;
that every kind of wonder might spring before one's eyes at any moment
of the day. Then, when no wonder came, there had been the thrill of the
empty boxes of earth; the probing with one's fingers to see what the
funny-looking bulbs would be, and watching the fronds of the pale vine.
Afterwards, there was another fascination--the fascination of some
strange and sinister atmosphere that he was much too young to define.
The place, he knew, was different from the rest of the house. It
projected, conventionally enough, from the drawing-room; but the heavy
door with thick windows of red glass shut it off from the whole world.
Its rather dirty and obscure windows looked over the same country that
Jeremy's bedroom window commanded. It also caught all the sun, so that
in the summer it was terribly hot. But Jeremy loved the heat. He was
discovered once by the scandalised Jampot quite naked dancing on the
wooden boards, his face and hands black with grime. No one could ever
understand "what he saw in the dirty place," and at one time he had been
forbidden to go there. Then he ha