Leaning over the low warm wall between the ricks and the next field, Ishmael recognised a couple of the artists who of late years had settled in those parts, and he caught their comments along with those of their neighbours.

“What a glorious sight!” said one of them, with a deep-drawn breath; “I’ve never seen anything to touch it....”  A couple of farmers’ wives standing by peered curiously at the speaker and his companion.  “Simme them folk must be lacken’ their senses,” said one to the other, “carlen’ a sight like this bewtiful!  Lacken’ their senses, sure ’nough!”

Ishmael smiled to himself, and in his mind agreed with both.  “I wonder how it happened?” piped up another artist, anxious to remove a false impression of callousness.  Ishmael explained that spontaneous combustion was probably the cause of the fire, and a farmer standing near volunteered his opinion that Angwin had packed his hay damp.  Everyone stood a while longer, staring; the glow had gone from the smouldering ricks, and the excitement of the event began to die in the minds of the onlookers.  The artist straightened himself and prepared to go.  “They’re out now,” he said, half-regretfully, half-cheerfully.  The farmer near him spoke again.  “Them ricks won’t be out for days and nights,” he said; “they’ll go on burning in their hearts.  They’m naught but a body o’ fire, that’s what they are ... a body o’ fire....”

Ishmael stayed to see Angwin and do what he could to help; then he began his walk home.  He was not running now, but aware of a physical discomfort that was not mere exhaustion.  He had a sharp pain in his side such as children call a stitch, but no amount of stooping to tie imaginary shoelaces would drive it away.  He was glad to accept the offer of a lift home when he was overtaken by a farmer’s cart, and as he was jogged along the pain grew fiercer.  By the time he reached Cloom the splendid fire that had warmed him on his run had died to nothingness, and at his ashen look Georgie cried out.  He allowed her to help him to bed and give him hot drinks, to scold him in her woman’s way.

“Such a foolish thing to do at your age ... you might have known!” she kept on repeating.  He said little, but in his own mind ran the refrain:  “She doesn’t understand.  She’s still too young....”  He wondered whether women ever really did know when talking was a mere foolishness, however sensible the thing said.  And again, over and over to himself, as an accompaniment even to his pain, ran:  “How well worth it ...!” For he had recaptured for a magic couple of hours something he had thought left behind him, had burned with it ardently and secretly.  He too had been a body of fire.

The phrase stayed, pricking at him, through the drifting veils of sleep that alternately deepened and thinned about him all night long.

CHAPTER IV

THE NEW JUDITH