“Will Maggie be there?” she said.

“Ay, Maaggie’ll be there, ready when yo want her.”

“But,” she said, “I don’t want her.”

He followed her look.

“I’ll ’ave it all claned oop and paapered and paainted.  Look yo—­I could have a hole knocked through t’ back wall o’ t’ kitchen and a winder put there—­and roon oop a wooden partition and make a passage for yo t’ goa to yore awn plaace, soa’s Maaggie’ll not bae in yore road.”

“You needn’t.  I like it best as it is.”

“Do yo?  D’yo mind thot Soonda yo caame laasst year?  Yo’ve aassked mae whan it was I started thinkin’ of yo.  It was than.  Thot daay whan yo sot there in thot chair by t’ fire, taalkin’ t’ mae and drinkin’ yore tae so pretty.”

She drew closer to him.

“Did you really love me then?”

“Ay—­I looved yo than.”

She pondered it.

“Jim—­what would you have done if I hadn’t loved you?”

He choked back something in his throat before he answered her.  “What sud I have doon?  I sud have goan on looving yo joost the saame.

“We’ll goa oopstairs now.”

He took her back and out through the kitchen and up the stone stairs that turned sharply in their narrow place in the wall.  He opened the door at the head of the landing.

“This would bae our room.  ‘Tis t’ best.”

He took her into the room where John Greatorex had died.  It was the marriage chamber, the birth-chamber, and the death-chamber of all the Greatorexes.  The low ceiling still bulged above the big double bed John Greatorex had died in.

The room was tidy and spotlessly clean.  The walls had been whitewashed.  Fresh dimity curtains hung at the window.  The bed was made, a clean white counterpane was spread on it.

The death room had been made ready for the living.  The death-bed waited for the bride.

Ally stood there, under the eyes of her lover, looking at those things.  She shivered slightly.

She said to herself, “It’s the room his father died in.”

And there came on her a horror of the room and of all that had happened in it, a horror of death and of the dead.

She turned away to the window and looked out.  The long marshland stretched below, white under the August sun.  Beyond it the green hills with their steep gray cliffs rose and receded, like a coast line, head after head.

To Ally the scene was desolate beyond all bearing and the house was terrible.

Her eyelids pricked.  Her mouth trembled.  She kept her back turned to Greatorex while she stifled a sob with her handkerchief pressed tight to her lips.

He saw and came to her and put his arm round her.

“What is it, Ally?  What is it, loove?”

She looked up at him.

“I don’t know, Jim.  But—­I think—­I’m afraid.”

“What are you afraid of?”

She thought a moment.  “I’m afraid of father.”