She turned her head and listened to the sleeper, who did not stir except to breathe. She wanted to see her moor and the house where the Pinderwells were walking and wondering at its emptiness. George would not hear her if she dressed and left the room, and, having done so, she stood outside the door and listened before she fumbled her way along the passages. She sped through the larches, but when her feet touched the heather they went more slowly, and now it was she who might have been a cloud, trailing across the moor. So she went until she saw the house, and then she ran towards it, startling the rabbits, hearing the blur of wings, and feeling the ping or flutter of insects against her face. The doors were locked, but the kitchen window was not hasped, and through it she climbed. The room had an unfamiliar look: it was dismantled, and ghostly heaps of straw and paper lay where the men had left them, yet this was still her home: nothing could exile her. She went into the hall and into each bare room, but she could not go upstairs. It was bad enough to see Mr. Pinderwell walking up and down, and she could not face the children whom she had deserted. She sat on the stairs, and the darkness seemed to shift about her. She thought of the bedroom she had left, and it seemed to her that there would never be a night when she would not leave it to find her own, nor a day when, as she worked in the hollow, her heart would not be here. Yet she was Helen Halkett, and she belonged to Halkett's Farm. She rose and walked into the kitchen and slipped her hand along the mantelshelf to find a box of matches she had left there. She was going to end the struggle. She could not burn Zebedee, but she could burn the house. The rooms where he had made love to her should stand no longer, and so her spirit might find a habitation where her body lived. She piled paper and straw against the windows and the doors, and set a lighted match to them; then she went to the moor and waited. She might have done it in a dream, for her indifference: it was no more to her than having lighted a few twigs in the heather; but when she saw the flames climbing up like red and yellow giants, she was afraid. There were hundreds of giants, throwing up hands and arms and trying to reach the roof. They fought with each other as they struggled, and the dark sky made a mirror for their fights. The poplars were being scorched, and she cried out at that discovery. Oh, the poplars! the poplars! How they must suffer! And how their leaves would drop, black and shrivelled, a black harvest to strew the lawn. She thought she heard the shouting of the Pinderwells, but she knew their agony would be short, and already they were silent. The poplars were still in pain, and she ran to the front of the house that she might not see them. There was a figure coming up the track. It was John, with his trousers pulled over his night things. "God! What's up?" he cried.