But she could not move.  Although her mind was still arguing the matter, all the rest of her being had consented.  She was going to do this thing.  In panic she looked along the wall at Richard, wishing he would come back to her.  But he was going on talking to the fishermen, though he held their waders in his hand.  She quite understood why he was doing that, and watched him through tears.  This was the last time he would be able to exercise that charm of which he was a little vain, since on all his few future days his intercourse with his fellows would be strictly specialised; so he was taking the opportunity.  In watching him and the reflection of his magnificence in the fishermen’s smiling subjugation, she was shot through by a pang of pride and exultation.  Though the night should engulf Richard and Marion, the triumph was not with the night.  In throwing in her lot with them and with the human race which is perpetually defeated, she was nevertheless choosing the side of victory....

She leaned back against the slope and waited.  This was a good place to wait.  The call of the redshanks, the cloud shadows that moved over the marshes like the footprints of invisible presences, made her feel calm.

Nevertheless her heart could not help but beat quick with fear.  She wished that he would come and comfort her.  But though he had left the fishermen he was not coming straight to her.  He had climbed the sea-wall and was looking out to the east, to the open sea, over the country of the mud.  He was thinking of Marion, and wondering where the tide had carried her.  The inexorable womb was continuing to claim its own.  She wanted to start up and cry out to him and hail him noisily from his obsession; but something in the place, in the call of the redshanks, in the procession of the shadows, reminded her that when she had cried out before she had brought death upon her lover.  This quietness was the safer way.  She would wait patiently until he came to make his exorbitant demand.

She sat and looked at the island, and wondered whether it was a son or daughter that waited for her there.