“Trap’ll be round,” Kit repeated doggedly. “I’d reyther stand.” He drew in his fingers as if her eyes hurt them, and did his best to straighten his back and set his jaw. The deliverance that was so near gave him courage to fight, in spite of the sinister things in her face and voice. He had yielded in almost every contest yet, and if she had lost where the fiddle was concerned, it was because she had been conquered by something in herself. To sit was to own himself beaten to the end, and would send him shamed to the marsh from a last defeat. And there was always the chance that if he sat he might never get away, because of the shrinking that wrought against him in his heart. So again he braced himself and said, “I’ll stand.” She bent forward towards him from the stair, her chin thrust out at him and her eyes nearly shut. He wanted to push her away and hurry out into the street. He had a feeling that she had trodden that winged thing underfoot, so that there was no longer a refuge for him upstairs. “I tellt you trap wouldn’t be round just yet.” “Ay, but it will.” “Likely you think I don’t know?” “Nay, not I.” Kit looked away. “I’m a liar, that’s what it is?” “Nay.” “Set down and bide.” “I’ll stand.” Suddenly she dropped her strained pose and became all violence and storm, like the wind that gets up out of nowhere on a silent night. Raising herself with a jerk, she flapped down the stair with the noise of a dozen carpet-beaters in full swing. Nobody ever expressed as much as Marget with a pair of down-trodden slippers loose at the heels; yet nobody would keep them when she was gone, pathetic and reverenced by a bed.... Kit thought of his winged thing she had beaten down, and looked to see feathers scattered under her feet. Her face was changed both in colour and shape by the unknown terrible things that lived in her brain. Her voice was changed in the same way, and it was her voice that Kit dreaded most, because his ear had the straighter run to his soul. The things that were part of Marget yet not Marget he never could understand. He was never ready for them, never on his guard. Now she was close to him, bent as if to strike, a trick that had a special horror for the sensitive old man. The children nudged each other and laughed, gloating, yet more than half afraid.