“Oh, who am I by?” Pauline exclaimed, clapping her hands.

“I give it up.  You’re just Saint Cecilia herself at fourteen.”

“Isn’t Mark foolish?” Pauline laughed.

“It’s my birthday to-morrow,” said Mark, “so I’m allowed to be foolish.”

“It’s my birthday in a week,” said Pauline.  “And as I’m two years younger than you I can be two years more foolish.”

Mark looked at her, and he was filled with wonder at the sanctity of her maidenhood.  Thenceforth meditating upon the Annunciation he should always clothe Pauline in a robe of white samite and set her in his mind’s eye for that other maid of Jewry, even as painters found holy maids in Florence or Perugia for their bright mysteries.

While Mark was walking back to Wych and when on the brow of the first rise of the road he stood looking down at Wychford in the valley below, a chill lisping wind from the east made him shiver and he thought of the lines in Keats’ Eve of St. Mark: 

The chilly sunset faintly told Of unmatured green vallies cold, Of the green thorny bloomless hedge, Of rivers new with spring-tide sedge, Of primroses by shelter’d rills, And daisies on the aguish hills.

The sky in the west was an unmatured green valley tonight, where Venus bloomed like a solitary primrose; and on the dark hills of Heaven the stars were like daisies.  He turned his back on the little town and set off up the hill again, while the wind slipped through the hedge beside him in and out of the blackthorn boughs, lisping, whispering, snuffling, sniffing, like a small inquisitive animal.  He thought of Monica, Margaret, and Pauline playing in their warm, candle-lit room behind him, and he thought of Miriam reading in her tall-back chair before dinner, for Evensong would be over by now.  Yes, Evensong would be over, he remembered penitently, and he ought to have gone this evening, which was the vigil of St. Mark and of his birthday.  At this moment he caught sight of the Wych Maries signpost black against that cold green sky.  He gave a momentary start, because seen thus the signpost had a human look; and when his heart beat normally it was roused again, this time by the sight of a human form indeed, the form of Esther, the wind blowing her skirts before her, hurrying along the road to which the signpost so crookedly pointed.  Mark who had been climbing higher and higher now felt the power of that wind full on his cheeks.  It was as if it had found what it wanted, for it no longer whispered and lisped among the boughs of the blackthorn, but blew fiercely over the wide pastures, driving Esther before it, cutting through Mark like a sword.  By the time he had reached the signpost she had disappeared in the wood.

Mark asked himself why she was going to Rushbrooke Grange.

“To Rushbrooke Grange,” he said aloud.  “Why should I think she is going to Rushbrooke Grange?”