u. I was stupid. Yes, you're quite right. That's
what a man would do with a woman, wouldn't he, if they were here
together and they were lovers? He'd make her stand up there." Insanely
he switched on the electric torch and flashed it up and down the niche,
though in the dazzling moonlight its rays were but a small circular
soilure.

"But it's not summer now," she reminded him tenderly, laying her hand
on his sleeve. "Since she's not here, let's go home. Think of those
bonny fires burning away and nobody the better for them!"

"That's what he'd do, he'd make her stand up there," he muttered,
sending the light up and down the niche very slowly, as if in time to
slow thoughts.

She turned and went down the steps and walked away, holding her hands,
close to her eyes like blinkers, so that she might be the less afflicted
by the night, whose beauty was a reproach to her. A desire to look out
towards the sea and the flatlands came on her. This temple set among the
woods was a human place; men had laid the stones, men had planted the
trees, men had thought of it before it was. It was the stage for a scene
in the human drama, which she had not been able to play. But the sea and
the flatlands were not made by men; they made humanity seem a little
thing, and human success and failure not reasonable causes for loud
laughter or loud weeping. At the hill's edge she leaned against a tree
and gazed down on the moon-diluted waters, on the moon-powdered lands,
and was jealous of the plain, disturbing woman who kept herself covered
with the quietness of the marshes to the distress of others; and saw
suddenly, on the path at the foot of the slope, the far, weak ray of a
dancing lantern.

She ran back to the temple. All she cared for really was pleasing him.
"Richard, Richard! I've found her! She's down there on the marshes!"

He was out beside her in a second. "Where? How do you know?"

"I saw her lantern down on the marshes!"

When they got back to the hill's edge the light was still to be seen,
bobbing along towards the elm brow. Richard clipped Ellen's waist to
show her how well pleased he was with her. "Ah, that'll be Marion!" he
said. "Nobody else would be on the marshes at this hour." Then a little
wind of anger blew over his voice. "Has she been to his tomb? Can she
have been to his tomb in the time? It's a steep climb for her. I
wonder.... I wonder...."

The lantern bobbed out of sight behind the elm row. Feeling that they