Roger stared at him, sucking his front teeth.  “But you’re frightened!” he said explosively.

“I am not.”

“You are.  You think she’s come to some harm down on the marshes.”  He slipped past him and flung open the French window, calling in a thin, whistling voice that could not have been heard fifty yards away:  “Mummie!  Mummie!”

A convulsion of rage ran through Richard.  With one hand he jerked Roger back into the room by his coat-collar, with the other he slammed the French window.  “Be quiet.  I tell you she’s all right.  I know where she’s gone.”

“Where, then?”

“Never mind.”

“Where?  Where?” His hands fumbled for the doorhandle again.

“Oh, stop that!” Richard loosed hold of him with the expression of one who had grasped what he thought to be soft grass and finds his palms scored by a fibrous stalk.  He said, and Ellen could see that he liked saying it as little as anything that he had ever said all his life long:  “If you must know, I think she’s gone up to my father’s tomb.”

Roger shook his head solemnly.  “No.  You’re wrong.  She hasn’t gone there.  And she’s come to harm.”

“Why in God’s name do you say that?” burst out Richard.

“I know.  I’ve known all the evening.  That’s really why I came back here after the service.  That talk about forgiveness was just something I made up as an excuse.  I knew quite well that something was wrong with mummie.”  His pale eyes sought first Richard and then Ellen.  “Don’t you believe a person might know if something happened to another person,” he asked wistfully, “if they loved them enough?”

There was indeed such an infinity of love in that weak gaze that Richard and Ellen exchanged the abashed look that passes between lovers when it is brought to their notice that they are not the sole practitioners of the spiritual art.  Richard murmured “Oh ... perhaps ... but really, Roger, she was quite bright before she went out.  Ellen, tell Roger....”

But Roger stared out at the empty silver garden and whimpered inattentively:  “I can’t help it.  I want to go down to the marshes and look for her.”

“Very well,” agreed Richard, blinking.  The sight of the love in those weak eyes made his voice authentically kind.  “We’ll go down.  She ought to be easy to find as she’s carrying a lantern.  You’re quite sure she has got a lantern with her, Ellen?”

“Oh yes,” said Ellen.  “It bumped against the glass when she came back and looked through the window.”

“When she came back and looked through the window?  What do you mean?”

“Why,” Ellen explained diffidently, not wanting to enlarge on his mother’s eccentricity.  “She said good-bye and went out and shut the door.  Then in a minute or two I looked up and saw her face against the glass....  I offered to open the door, but she shook her head and went away.”

“But, Ellen!  Didn’t that strike you as very strange?” She stared in amazement that his eyes could look into hers like this.  He choked back a reproach.  “Ellen ... tell me everything ... everything she said before she went out.”