death then."

"Oh, mine--"

"Our death, Jeanne."

He turned to her in the path. His mouth was hard now, but his eyes shone
at her, smiling, suddenly warm, suddenly tender.

She knew herself then; she knew there was one cruelty, one brutality
beyond bearing, John's death.

IV

John had gone away for a week.

If she could tire herself out, and not dream. In the slack days between
hay-time and harvest she was never tired enough. She lay awake, teased by
the rucking of the coarse hot sheet under her back, and the sweat that
kept on sliding between her skin and her night gown. And she dreamed.

She was waiting in the beech ring on the top of the field. Inside the
belt of the tree trunks a belt of stones grew up, like the wall of the
garden. It went higher and higher and a hole opened in it, a long slit.
She stuck her head through the hole to look out over the hills.

This was the watch-tower. She knew, as if she remembered it, that John
had told her to go up and wait for him there; she was keeping watch for
him on the tower.

Grey mist flowed over the field like water. He was down there in the
field. If she went to him he would take her in his arms.

She was walking now on the highway to Bourton-on-the-Hill. At the dip
after the turn shallow water came out of the grass borders and ran
across the road, cold to her naked feet. She knew that something was
happening to John. He had gone away and she had got to find him and
bring him back. She had got to find the clear hill where the battleship
sailed over the field.

Instead of the ship she found the Barrow Farm beeches. They stood in a
thick ring round a clearing of grey grass and grey light. John was
standing there with a woman. She turned and showed her sharp face, the
colour of white clay, her long evil nose, her eyes tilted corner and the
thin tail of her mouth, writhing. That was Miss Lister who had been in
Gibson's office. She had John now.

Forms without faces, shrouded white women, larvae slipped from the black
grooves of the beech trunks; they made a ring round him with their
bodies, drew it in tighter and tighter. The grey light beat like a pulse
with the mounting horror.

She cried out his name, and her voice sounded tragic and immense; sharp
like a blade of lightning screaming up to the top of the sky. A black
iron curtain crashed down before her and cut off the dream.

Gwinnie looked up over the crook of her knee from the boot she was
l