She remained without, drooping.  Would he find his mother there?  She hoped so, for then they could all go home and leave this place, which she felt despised her.  The tall trees of the forest, lifting their bare branches like antlers against the stars, seemed to be holding their heads high in contempt of her defeat.  For so to be forgotten was defeat.

No sounds came from the temple, and she timidly went up the steps and passed into the interior, which was cut by the colonnade into narrow chambers of shadows and broader chambers of light.  At first she could not see him anywhere, and cried in alarm:  “Richard!”

“I’m here,” he answered.  He was standing beside her, leaning against a pillar, but put out no hand to soothe her fear.

“Have you not found her?” she quavered.

He let the yellow circle of the electric torch travel over the cracked stucco-wall that faced them, the paintless door at its left extremity, the drift of dead leaves on the stone floor.

“What does that door open on to?” asked Ellen, forgetting the reason for their search in the queerness of the place.

“A staircase up to the room above.”

“What a lovely place,” she cried joyfully, trying to remind him of the existence of happiness, “to play in in the summer!  Could one sleep up there, do you think?”

He switched off the light.  “I daresay,” he said gruffly in the darkness.

“And look!” She pointed to a moonlit niche in the middle of the wall high and deep enough to hold a life-sized statue.  “It would be fun if I stood up there, wouldn’t it?”

There was silence; and then amazingly, his voice cracked out on her like a whip.  “Why do you say that?  Did anybody tell you about this place?  Has she told you anything about it?”

“Why, no!” she stammered.  “Nobody’s told me a thing of it!  I just thought it would be fun if I were to stand up there like a statue.  You take me up too quick.”

His passion died suddenly.  “No,” he said weakly, exhaustedly.  “Of course she wouldn’t tell you.  I was stupid.  Yes, you’re quite right.  That’s what a man would do with a woman, wouldn’t he, if they were here together and they were lovers?  He’d make her stand up there.”  Insanely he switched on the electric torch and flashed it up and down the niche, though in the dazzling moonlight its rays were but a small circular soilure.

“But it’s not summer now,” she reminded him tenderly, laying her hand on his sleeve.  “Since she’s not here, let’s go home.  Think of those bonny fires burning away and nobody the better for them!”

“That’s what he’d do, he’d make her stand up there,” he muttered, sending the light up and down the niche very slowly, as if in time to slow thoughts.