‘You’re to wear it,’ she said quietly. ‘You’ll catch cold,’ and she wound it round his neck again, while he submitted and made faces at her, his eyes laughing into hers, like a child coaxing an elder to smiles. Watching him, Judith thought: ‘Are you conceited and spoilt?’ All that gaiety and proud indifference, all that unconscious-seeming charm, that confident chatter--all might be the product of a complete self-consciousness. Surely he must look in the glass and adore his own reflection. She remembered her old dream of marrying him, and thought with a vast sorrowful prophetic sense of the many people who would yearn to him silently for love, while he went on his way, wanting none of them. Against the dusk, his head, his face shone as if palely lit. Narrowly she watched him; but there was no sign for her: all that brilliance of expression glancing and pausing around him, and nothing for her beyond a light smile or two, a casual appreciation of her temporary uses. He and Mariella had scarcely once said: ‘Do you remember?’ If they still cherished any of the past she was not in it. It was strange to think of such indifference, when they, with the other three, were all the pattern, all the colour and richness that had ever come into life. In the dying light their mystery fell over them again, and they were as unattainable as ever. If only with the rare quality of their physical appearance they must always enslave her; and she felt worn out with the stress of them. ‘To-morrow,’ said Charlie, ‘we’ll bring Roddy.’ ‘Yes. Come on,’ said Mariella. ‘We must hurry for our train.’ They tramped in silence across the cold solitude of the marsh, and the wind came after them, keen and menacing. When they arrived at the river’s edge, Charlie stood still, and looked across, saying dreamily: ‘There’s a light in the old house. I suppose that’s the caretaker person. We might look in to-morrow and surprise her. Doesn’t it look lonely?... I wish we would live there again. Where’s your house, Judith? I thought it was next door.’ ‘So it is, but the trees hide it.’ ‘Oh yes, I’d forgotten.’ Then she ferried them across the river in the punt, and parted from them on the other side, where the lane to the station branched off. ‘Well, see you to-morrow.’ Julian looked up at the sky. ‘I believe it’s thawing,’ he said. ‘I believe it’ll rain in the night.’ ‘Rot!’ said Charlie. ‘Why--feel the ground.’ ‘Yes, but the air’s milder. And look at the sky.’ To the east and north the frosty stars pointed their darts; but in the smoky, tumultuous west, black clouds devoured the last of the sun. Panic seized Judith, and she hated Julian, wanted to strike him. ‘Rot! that doesn’t mean anything,’ said Charlie uneasily. ‘And listen to the wind.’ The wind was in the treetops, full and relentless, and driving the clouds. ‘Oh, shut up!’ said Charlie. ‘Can’t there be a wind without a thaw? And come on, can’t you, or we’ll miss our train.’ ‘Good-night then.’