There are, say moralists, roads that lead to Hell, but it was on a road that leads to Hampstead that the two young cyclists set forth towards eleven o’clock.  The difference between the character of the two destinations was soon apparent, for whereas man taken in bulk had perhaps made Hell, Hampstead had obviously been made by the upper classes.  There were trees and gardens, and instead of dark canals of sky banked by the roofs of houses and hazed with the yellow scum of London lights, the heavens spread out in a wide trembling pool.  From that rampart of the town, the Spaniard’s Road, two plains lay exposed to left and right; the scent of may-tree blossom had stolen up the hill; the rising moon clung to a fir-tree bough.  Over the country the far stars presided, and sleep’s dark wings were spread above the fields—­silent, scarce breathing, lay the body of the land.  But to the south, where the town, that restless head, was lying, the stars seemed to have fallen and were sown in the thousand furrows of its great grey marsh, and from the dark miasma of those streets there travelled up a rustle, a whisper, the far allurement of some deathless dancer, dragging men to watch the swirl of her black, spangled drapery, the gleam of her writhing limbs.  Like the song of the sea in a shell was the murmur of that witch of motion, clasping to her the souls of men, drawing them down into a soul whom none had ever known to rest.

Above the two young cousins, scudding along that ridge between the country and the town, three thin white clouds trailed slowly towards the west-like tired seabirds drifting exhausted far out from land on a sea blue to blackness with unfathomable depth.

For an hour those two rode silently into the country.

“Have we come far enough?” Martin said at last.

Thyme shook her head.  A long, steep hill beyond a little sleeping village had brought them to a standstill.  Across the shadowy fields a pale sheet of water gleamed out in moonlight.  Thyme turned down towards it.

“I’m hot,” she said; “I want to bathe my face.  Stay here.  Don’t come with me.”

She left her bicycle, and, passing through a gate, vanished among the trees.

Martin stayed leaning against the gate.  The village clock struck one.  The distant call of a hunting owl, “Qu-wheek, qu-wheek!” sounded through the grave stillness of this last night of May.  The moon at her curve’s summit floated at peace on the blue surface of the sky, a great closed water-lily.  And Martin saw through the trees scimitar-shaped reeds clustering black along the pool’s shore.  All about him the may-flowers were alight.  It was such a night as makes dreams real and turns reality to dreams.

‘All moonlit nonsense!’ thought the young man, for the night had disturbed his heart.

But Thyme did not come back.  He called to her, and in the death-like silence following his shouts he could hear his own heart beat.  He passed in through the gate.  She was nowhere to be seen.  Why was she playing him this trick?