“No,” he said, “there was nothing to imagine. It was just as I told you. Nothing happened. But I know now that there’s something in what the chaps in the town said. I believe in devils now. But my God, Maradick”—he clutched the other’s arm—“Janet’s down there. It isn’t for myself I care. He can do what he likes to me. But it’s _her_, we must get her away or there’s no knowing. . . . I didn’t sleep a wink last night, thinking what he might be doing to her. He may carry her away somewhere, where one can’t get at her; or he may do—God knows. But that’s what he said last night, just that! that she wasn’t for me or for anyone, that she was _never_ for anyone—that he would keep her.” Tony broke off. “I’m silly with it all, I think,” he said, “it’s swung me off my balance a bit. One can’t think; but it would be the most enormous help if you’d go and see. It’s the uncertainty that’s so awful. If I could just know that it’s all right . . . and meanwhile I’m thinking out plans. It’s all got to happen jolly soon now. I’ll talk when you come back. It’s most awfully decent of you. . . .” Maradick left him pacing the paths with his head down and his hands clenched behind his back. He found Morelli sitting quietly with Janet and Miss Minns in the garden. They had had tea out there, and the tea-things glittered and sparkled in the sun. It would have been difficult to imagine anything more peaceful. The high dark red brick of the garden walls gave soft velvet shadows to the lawn; the huge tree in the corner flung a vast shade over the beds and paths; rooks swung slowly above their heads through the blue spacious silence of the summer evening; the air was heavy with the scent of the flowers. Morelli came forward and greeted Maradick almost eagerly. “What! Have you had tea? Sure! We can easily have some more made, you know. Come and sit down. Have a cigar—a pipe? Right. I wondered when you were going to honour us again. But we had young Gale in yesterday evening for quite a long time.” Janet, with a smile of apology, went indoors. Miss Minns was knitting at a distance. This was obviously the right moment to begin, but the words would not come. It all seemed so absurd in this delicious garden with the silence and the peace, and, for want of a better word, the sanity of it all; all the things that Maradick had been thinking, Tony’s story and the fantastic scene in the market-place last night, that and the ideas that had sprung from it, were all so out of line now. People weren’t melodramatic like that, only one had at times a kind of mood that induced one to think things, absurd things.