She saw that his hands were trembling, and he answered shakily: ‘Do about it ... I.... What do you want to do about it?... I’ve said I----’ ‘Would you like me to marry you?’ she asked softly. ‘God! If there was a chance!...’ ‘Well--I might, Martin.’ She started to laugh and cry weakly at sight of the transfigured face he turned towards her; and a voice went on protesting inside her: ‘No! No! No! It isn’t true. I never will.’ ‘Oh, I’m so tired, Martin, I’m so tired!’ ‘Come home, my dear, come home.’ It was compassion and exultation and doubt and certainty, all mixed in an inarticulate eloquence. He lifted her and brushed her skirt. There was nothing to do but accompany him down the hill. He left her at her bedroom door. His mother, he said, would come and give her aspirin and put her to bed, and see that dinner was brought up to her. His mother was splendid about headaches. To-morrow there would be plenty of time to talk. He had behaved perfectly. * * * * * She fell asleep that night in her white room with its cretonne wreaths of pink roses tied up with blue ribbon, and dreamed of Roddy. He sat on the hill, close to where the rabbit had been shot, and conversed in friendly fashion. He had come back from abroad, from some remote island. He took a puff at his pipe and said with apparent irrelevance: ‘Not wives, my dear girl--mistresses. It’s more convenient. When I return I intend to take Martin as my partner.’ ‘Martin wouldn’t come. Not if it’s mistresses....’ ‘Oh, dear me, yes. He’ll soon forget you over there. It’s a very voluptuous clime.’ She said very humbly: ‘Would you care for me to come, Roddy?’ ‘I fear you’re supered,’ he said with elaborate courtesy. ‘I suppose so.’ He studied a notebook. ‘Where do I come in your list, Roddy?’ ‘You’re in the twenties, somewhere,’ he said indifferently. ‘Oh, miles down----’ He seemed suddenly bored or suspicious, and shifted his position. As he did so, she saw his face for an instant, heavy-lidded and dissipated. She understood that he was thinking of voluptuous climes. It seemed then there was no use in hoping to win him back. He was, obviously, bored to death with her. ‘What’s in here?’ he said suddenly, and plunged his hand into the earth. The rabbit!... the rabbit!... Everything shrieked,--and she started awake, sweating, in horror and desolation. * * * * * She leaned out of the window and saw the moon high in the sky. Beneath it, the trees had suffered their moon-change and were sculptured masses of dark marble, washed over with a silver-green phosphorescence. A tragic night, sleepless and staring beneath the urgent pressure of the moon: there was no comfort in it.