We are on the burgh.  The hills tumble this way and that; below is the great weald of Sussex, blue with vapour, spotted with gold fields, level as a landscape by Hobbema; Chanctonbury Ring stands up like a gaunt watcher; its crown of trees is pressed upon its brow, a dark and imperial crown.

Overhead the sky is full of dark grey clouds; through them the sun breaks and sheds silver dust over the landscape; in the passing gleams the green of the furze grows vivid.  If you listen you hear the tinkling of the bell-wether; if you look you see a solitary rabbit.  A stunted hawthorn stands by the circle of stone, and by it the lovers were sitting.  He was talking to her of Italy, of cathedrals and statues, for although he now loves her as a man should love, he still saw his honeymoon in a haze of Botticellis, cardinals, and chants.  They stood up and bid each other good-bye, and waving hands they parted.

Night was coming on apace, a long way lay still before him, and he walked hastily; she being nearer home, sauntered leisurely, swinging her parasol.  The sweetness of the evening was in her blood and brain, and the architectural beauty of the landscape—­the elliptical arches of the hills—­swam before her.  But she had not walked many minutes before a tramp, like a rabbit out of a bush, sprang out of the furze where he had been sleeping.  He was a gaunt hulking fellow, six feet high.

“Now ’aven’t you a copper or two for a poor fellow, Missie?”

Kitty started from him frightened.  “No, I haven’t, I have nothing ... go away.”

He laughed hoarsely, she ran from him.  “Now, don’t run so fast, Missie, won’t you give a poor fellow something?”

“I have nothing.”

“Oh, yes you ’ave; what about those pretty lips?”

A few strides brought him again to her side.  He laid his hand upon her arm.  She broke her parasol across his face, he laughed hoarsely.  She saw his savage beast-like eyes fixed hungrily upon her.  She fainted for fear of his look of dull tigerish cruelty.  She fell....

When shaken and stunned and terrified she rose from the ground, she saw the tall gaunt figure passing away like a shadow.  The wild solitary landscape was pale and dim.  In the fading light it was a drawing made on blue paper with a hard pencil.  The long undulating lines were defined on the dead sky, the girdle of blue encircling sea was an image of eternity.  All now was the past, there did not seem to be a present.  Her mind was rocked to and fro, and on its surface words and phrases floated like sea weed....  To throw her down and ill-treat her.  Her frock is spoilt; they will ask her where she has been to, and how she got herself into such a state.  Mechanically she brushed herself, and mechanically, very mechanically she picked bits of furze from her dress.  She held each away from her and let it drop in a silly vacant way, all the while running the phrases over in her mind:  “What