coat and stick when she came down; and he had grudged
the time spent in waiting for her. Wearily she followed him out of the
window. From what her mother had told her about men, she had always
known that even Richard, since he was male, might forget his habit of
worship towards her and turn libellous as husbands are, and pretend that
she was being tiresome when she was not. But she would never have
believed that it could come so soon. And it was spoiling her. She no
longer felt possessed of the perfect control of her actions, nor sure of
her own nobility. Only a second or two ago she had betrayed her sex by
pretending to be frightened by assuming one of the base qualities which
tradition lyingly ascribed to women, because she had to be in his
presence no matter at what price. There was no knowing where all this
would end.

But in the inventive beauty of the night she found distraction, for it
had wrought many fantastical changes in the dull world the day had
handed it. The frost had made the soil that had been sodden metal-hard,
while preserving its roughness, so that to tread the paths was like
walking on beaten silver. Since its rising, the moon had sown and raised
a harvest of new plants in the garden; for the rose-trees, emaciated
with leaflessness, had each a shadow that twisted on the earth like
ground-ivy or climbed the wall like a creeper. Through an orchard
piebald with moonbeams and shadow, and a gate, glaring as with new white
paint, set in a lichen-grey hedge, they passed out on the grizzled
hillside. He did not take her down the path by which she and Marion had
gone on to the marshes the previous afternoon, but plunged forward into
the short grey fur of the moonlit field, where there was no path, and
led her up in a slanting course towards the top of the elm-hedge that
striped the hill. It was rough walking over the steep frozen hummocks,
and she wished he would not walk so fast. But it was lovely going up
like this, and with every step widening the wide, whitely-blazing view.
The elm trees stood like chased toys made by silversmiths where the
light struck them; and in the darkness seemed like harsh twiggy nets
hung on tall poles to catch the stars. Scattered over the polished
harbour, the black boats squatted on their shadows and the tide licked
towards them with an ebony and silver tongue. But far out in the fairway
a liner and some lesser steamers carried their spilling cargo of orange
brightness, and th