towards the bell.  But he took his bleeding finger away from his lips and waved it at her, crying:  “No! no!  I don’t want either of the servants round till I’ve found that fool and that woman!  This is some new folly—­probably I’ll have to get him away before mother comes!  Come on!  Perhaps they’re hanging about the garden, though God knows why!” After making a savage movement towards the broken vase, as if he could not bear to leave the disorder as it was, and checking it abruptly, jarringly, he rushed into the dining-room, and Ellen followed him.

The two were there, their faces pressed against the window-panes.  Behind them the grey waste of stormy shallow waters, and the salt-dimmed pastures, and the black range of the Kentish hills, hung with grape-purple rainclouds, made it apparent how much greater dignity belongs to the earth and sea than to those who people them.  As Richard and Ellen halted at the door the faces receded from the glass.  The woman stepped backwards and, looking as if she were being moved on by a policeman, passed suddenly out of sight beyond the window’s edge.  Richard crossed the room and opened the French window, but by the time he had unlocked it the man in uniform, who had been beckoning to his companion with long bony hands, had gone in search of her.  As Richard put his head round the door to bid them enter, the wind, which was now rushing round the house, made itself felt as a chill commotion, an icy anger of the air, in which both he and Ellen shivered.  Presently the pair in uniform appeared again, but at some distance across the lawn, and too intensely absorbed in argument to pay any attention to him.

“Oh, damn! oh, damn!” sobbed Richard.  The wind was blowing earth-daubed leaves off the flowerbeds through the open door into the prim room.  He stepped into the gale and shouted:  “Roger!  Roger!  Come in!”

Roger waved his arms, which were too long for the sleeves of his coat, and from his mouthings it was evident that he was shouting back, but the wind took it all.  In anger Richard stepped back into the room and made as if to close the doors, and at that the two on the lawn ran towards the house, with that look which common people have when they run for a train, as if their feet were buckling up under them.  Richard held the door wide again, but when the couple reached the path in front of the house they were once more seized with a doubt about entering and came to a standstill.

“Come in,” said Richard; “come in.”

The man took off his cap and ran his hands through his pale, long hair.  “Is mother in?” he demanded in a thin, whistling voice.

“Come in,” said Richard; “come in.”

The man began:  “Well, if mother’s not in, I don’t know—­”