There came to him a memory of a distant winter afternoon, so far distant that he could not have been more than four or five, when they had come back from doing their Christmas shopping at Prittlebay, and he had grizzled, as tired children do, at the steepness of the hill that climbed from Roothing station to Yaverland’s End, always a stiff pull, and that day a brown muck of trodden snow.  She had looked round with her hard proud stare to make sure that nobody was watching them, and then spread out her crimson cloak and danced backwards in front of him, and cried out loving little gibes at his heavy footedness, her own vitality flashing about her like lightning.  When she was younger still, and had not wept so much, she must often have glowed very beautifully under her lover’s eyes.  It was a pity that she had chosen to love that thief, who stole the memories of her glorious moments as he had stolen her good repute and peace of mind, and crept away with the loot to the tomb on the hillside where his son could not pursue him.  As he thought of the unmitigated quality of his mother’s lot he hated other women for their cheerful lives; and Ellen, who had felt that his mood had turned from her, and was watching his face, said to herself:  “He has some trouble that he is not telling me.  Well, why should he?  We are almost strangers.”  Suddenly she felt very weak and lonely, and put her hands over her face.

Mrs. Lawson put her head round the door.  “You young people’s letting the clock run on.  Nae doot ye’re douce and souple walkers, but if ye want to catch the Edinburgh bus ye’ll hev none too much time.”

Yaverland and Ellen both started forward, and their eyes met.  “Oh, we must hurry!” she exclaimed, with a pale distress that puzzled him by its intensity.  Yet she made him wait while she pinned up her hair; and that almost made him suspect her as a minx, for she looked so pretty with her arms above her head and her white fingers shuttling in and out of her red hair.  But when they got into the lane outside she hurried towards the high road as if she fled from something, catching her breath sobbingly when the darkness was so thick that she could not run, although he told her many times that there was no need for haste.  “See,” he said, as they took their stand at the cross-roads, “the bus isn’t anywhere in sight yet.”  But she did not answer him, and he became aware that she was trembling.  “Are you cold?  Would you like my coat?” he asked, but she murmured a little broken mouseish refusal.  Could it possibly be that she was frightened of being alone with him in the dark?  He had to own to himself that she would have been afraid of him if she had known some of the things that he had done, although he did not admit that her fear would be anything more than a child’s harsh judgment of matters it did not understand.  But no rumours could have reached her ears, for he had always lived very secretly, even beyond the needs of discretion, since he knew that the passive sort of women with whom, for the most part, he had had dealings have an enormous power of self-deception, and could, as the years went on, if there were no witnesses to dispute it, pretend to themselves that what had happened with him was no reality but only a naughty dream that had come to them between sleeping and waking.