“Oh, just bits of things. Mayn’t a man want to talk to his wife sometimes?” He paused for a moment as they stepped out. The moonlight shone full-orbed on the front of the house in vivid but colourless illumination, making a warm neutral tone of its mellow redness. Below the lake gleamed silver grey, across it was ruled the velvet blackness of the yew-hedge, and beyond, the marsh stretched level to the sea. Colin’s eyes sparkled as he looked on the heritage that he loved, but came back quickly to Violet. “My word, you’re a beautiful woman!” he said. “I was in luck, wasn’t I, with my wooing? Did you hear Granny ask me if Raymond had come? I wish he had. I often wish Raymond was here to look on our happiness.” He took her arm, and began walking towards the yew-hedge. Stanier always stimulated him to be himself, and it was through some little revelation of himself that he could most surely make her wince. “I often thought of telling you something about Raymond,” he said, “which perhaps you never guessed. Do you know I actually saw him drown? Only just for a second but such an interesting one. I can see it now, like some scene on the movies. I had gone down to the lake after him, heard the crash of the ice, and there he was in the water. There was nothing to be done. If I had jumped in after him I should only have drowned as well, and you wouldn’t have liked that. Nor would I.” Violet felt herself shudder, not at what Colin had done or what he had not done but at what he _was_.... That trembling passed down the bare arm in which Colin had linked his. “That’s not really news to me,” she said. “I guessed it.” Colin pressed her arm. “I wondered if you had,” he said. “Characteristic of me, wasn’t it, to be in at the death. My dear, how horrified you are at me. You’re trembling. I rather like your being horrified at me, and yet I rather resent it. What odd people we are, to be sure.... Are you glad to see me, Vi? Pleased I came down? Rather a difficult question, isn’t it? I make you shudder sometimes; I make you freeze. And yet you love me. That’s what tortures you.... Look, there’s the door in the yew hedge! It was exactly there you stood, when you found out you loved me. And the next morning you threw Raymond over. I adored that morning. However, we’ll leave these romantic reminiscences, and come on to this evening. Cigarette? My God, Violet, what an evening!” He offered her his case, and then took one himself, nursing the match in his hollowed hands. His face vividly lit, glowed with some elfish glee.