“I don’t know how she did it,” she continued, and ceased, and there was a long pause, in which a little owl called first here, then there, as it moved from tree to tree in the garden.

“That’s so like Aunt Lucy and Aunt Katie,” said Rachel at last.  “They always make out that she was very sad and very good.”

“Then why, for goodness’ sake, did they do nothing but criticize her when she was alive?” said Helen.  Very gentle their voices sounded, as if they fell through the waves of the sea.

“If I were to die to-morrow . . .” she began.

The broken sentences had an extraordinary beauty and detachment in Hewet’s ears, and a kind of mystery too, as though they were spoken by people in their sleep.

“No, Rachel,” Helen’s voice continued, “I’m not going to walk in the garden; it’s damp—­it’s sure to be damp; besides, I see at least a dozen toads.”

“Toads?  Those are stones, Helen.  Come out.  It’s nicer out.  The flowers smell,” Rachel replied.

Hewet drew still farther back.  His heart was beating very quickly.  Apparently Rachel tried to pull Helen out on to the terrace, and helen resisted.  There was a certain amount of scuffling, entreating, resisting, and laughter from both of them.  Then a man’s form appeared.  Hewet could not hear what they were all saying.  In a minute they had gone in; he could hear bolts grating then; there was dead silence, and all the lights went out.

He turned away, still crumpling and uncrumpling a handful of leaves which he had torn from the wall.  An exquisite sense of pleasure and relief possessed him; it was all so solid and peaceful after the ball at the hotel, whether he was in love with them or not, and he was not in love with them; no, but it was good that they should be alive.

After standing still for a minute or two he turned and began to walk towards the gate.  With the movement of his body, the excitement, the romance and the richness of life crowded into his brain.  He shouted out a line of poetry, but the words escaped him, and he stumbled among lines and fragments of lines which had no meaning at all except for the beauty of the words.  He shut the gate, and ran swinging from side to side down the hill, shouting any nonsense that came into his head.  “Here am I,” he cried rhythmically, as his feet pounded to the left and to the right, “plunging along, like an elephant in the jungle, stripping the branches as I go (he snatched at the twigs of a bush at the roadside), roaring innumerable words, lovely words about innumerable things, running downhill and talking nonsense aloud to myself about roads and leaves and lights and women coming out into the darkness—­about women—­about Rachel, about Rachel.”  He stopped and drew a deep breath.  The night seemed immense and hospitable, and although so dark there seemed to be things moving down there in the harbour and movement out at sea.  He gazed until the darkness numbed him, and then he walked on quickly, still murmuring to himself.  “And I ought to be in bed, snoring and dreaming, dreaming, dreaming.  Dreams and realities, dreams and realities, dreams and realities,” he repeated all the way up the avenue, scarcely knowing what he said, until he reached the front door.  Here he paused for a second, and collected himself before he opened the door.