He flung it. It alighted in the middle of the pond. It stuck--oh, horror!--upright, caught in something, and refused to sink. ‘Oh, Roddy!’ It stared at them across the waste of waters, stark, forlorn, reproachful. It said: ‘Why did you pick me up, encourage and befriend me when this is what you meant to do?’ ‘Well, come on,’ said Roddy. They fled from it. They fled from it, but ah!--it pursued them. From miles away it wailed to Judith in a high thin squeak: ‘Save me! Save me!’ They made excuses to each other for spoiling the paper chase, and going back the same way. Their feet were compelled, driven. The pond lay fair and flawless in the evening light. The umbrella was drowned. Roddy stood at the edge and bit his lip. He said: ‘Well, I almost wish I hadn’t thrown the poor old chap away.’ She nodded. She could not speak. The place was haunted for ever. But what remained more deeply in her memory was the bond with Roddy, the sharing of an emotion, the secret sympathy. Avidly she seized upon it, and with it nourished her immoderate ambitions. One day they would all like her better than anyone else: even Roddy would tell her every thing. Their lives, instead of being always remote and mysterious would revolve intimately round her. She would know all, all about them. * * * * * From that far off unsubstantial time Roddy’s face was the last, the clearest, the strangest to float up. There was a field with chalky pits in it and ripening blackberries and wastes of gorse and bracken. The curious smell of the bracken rose faint but penetrating, earthy and yet unreal, disturbing. She was staring in horror at a dead rabbit lying in the path. It was stretched on its side with its tiny frail-boned paws laid out quiet, and the tender secret white fur of its underneath half revealed. One of them--which?--she could never remember--said: ‘Well, I never thought I’d touch it.’ It was like hearing a person speak in a bad dream. ‘How did you do it?’ said Roddy’s voice. ‘Well, it was sitting, and I crept up and chucked a stone to startle it up, not meaning to hurt it. But I must have hit it plumb behind the ear,--I killed it outright anyway. It was an absolute fluke. I couldn’t do it again if I tried all my life.’ ‘Hum,’ said Roddy. ‘Funny thing.’ He stood with his hands in his pockets looking down at the corpse, making his face a mask. The sun wavered and darkened. The surface of the bracken shone with a metallic light, the grass was lurid, the trees hissed. Judith struggled in a nightmare. ‘Well, what shall I do with it?’ said someone. ‘I’ll see to it,’ said Roddy. Then he and she were alone. She bent down and touched the fur. It was dead, it was dead. She fell on her knees beside it and wept. ‘I say, _don’t_,’ said Roddy after a bit. He could not bear tears. She wept all the more, awful sobs from the pit of the stomach. ‘He didn’t mean it, it can’t be helped,’ said Roddy. Then after another interval: