d been born, the best bedroom for many generations. The china
on the heavy washstand had pink roses on it, too, and the house was
fragrant with real roses, burning wood, clean, scented linen. Jasmine
grew round the window and nodded in.

"Are you going to be happy?" George asked her, when the warm darkness
dropped on them like another coverlet, and she hardly knew that it was
she who reassured him. Could it be Helen Caniper in this room with the
low ceiling and farmhouse smells, this bridal chamber of the Halketts?
Helen Caniper seemed to have disappeared.

She woke when she had been asleep for a little while, and at first she
could not remember where she was; then the window darted out of the
darkness and the furniture took on shapes. She looked up and saw the
looming canopy of the bed, she heard George breathing beside her, and
suddenly she felt suffocated by the draperies and the low ceiling and
the remembrance of the big pink roses growing on the wall.

She slid to the edge of the bed and out of it. The carpet was harsh to
her feet, but, by the window, the bare boards soothed them.

There were dark clouds floating against the sky, and the larches looked
like another cloud dropped down until she saw their crests, spear-like
and piercing: they hid the moor in its livery of night.

She turned her head and listened to the sleeper, who did not stir except
to breathe. She wanted to see her moor and the house where the
Pinderwells were walking and wondering at its emptiness. George would
not hear her if she dressed and left the room, and, having done so, she
stood outside the door and listened before she fumbled her way along the
passages.

She sped through the larches, but when her feet touched the heather they
went more slowly, and now it was she who might have been a cloud,
trailing across the moor. So she went until she saw the house, and then
she ran towards it, startling the rabbits, hearing the blur of wings,
and feeling the ping or flutter of insects against her face.

The doors were locked, but the kitchen window was not hasped, and
through it she climbed. The room had an unfamiliar look: it was
dismantled, and ghostly heaps of straw and paper lay where the men had
left them, yet this was still her home: nothing could exile her.

She went into the hall and into each bare room, but she could not go
upstairs. It was bad enough to see Mr. Pinderwell walking up and down,
and she could not face the children who