cers trampled across the dry
ground, wearing away the grass with their booted feet. Round this patch
of all but daylight, alive with motion and noise, the night seemed
preternaturally dark. Bars of light reached out into it, and every now
and then a lonely figure or a couple of lovers, interlaced, would cross
the bright shaft, flashing for a moment into visible existence, to
disappear again as quickly and surprisingly as they had come.

Denis stood by the entrance of the enclosure, watching the swaying,
shuffling crowd. The slow vortex brought the couples round and round
again before him, as though he were passing them in review. There
was Priscilla, still wearing her queenly toque, still encouraging the
villagers--this time by dancing with one of the tenant farmers. There
was Lord Moleyn, who had stayed on to the disorganised, passoverish
meal that took the place of dinner on this festal day; he one-stepped
shamblingly, his bent knees more precariously wobbly than ever, with a
terrified village beauty. Mr. Scogan trotted round with another. Mary
was in the embrace of a young farmer of heroic proportions; she was
looking up at him, talking, as Denis could see, very seriously. What
about? he wondered. The Malthusian League, perhaps. Seated in the corner
among the band, Jenny was performing wonders of virtuosity upon the
drums. Her eyes shone, she smiled to herself. A whole subterranean life
seemed to be expressing itself in those loud rat-tats, those long rolls
and flourishes of drumming. Looking at her, Denis ruefully remembered
the red notebook; he wondered what sort of a figure he was cutting now.
But the sight of Anne and Gombauld swimming past--Anne with her eyes
almost shut and sleeping, as it were, on the sustaining wings of
movement and music--dissipated these preoccupations. Male and female
created He them...There they were, Anne and Gombauld, and a hundred
couples more--all stepping harmoniously together to the old tune of Male
and Female created He them. But Denis sat apart; he alone lacked his
complementary opposite. They were all coupled but he; all but he...

Somebody touched him on the shoulder and he looked up. It was Henry
Wimbush.

"I never showed you our oaken drainpipes," he said. "Some of the ones
we dug up are lying quite close to here. Would you like to come and see
them?"

Denis got up, and they walked off together into the darkness. The music
grew fainter behind them. Some of the higher notes