She carried the seat under the hedge in the paddock, where she had watched with Larry, and placed herself on it, then rested her elbow on her knee, and her head in her hand. Her feet were bare, dipped in the dewy grass; a seeded dandelion, stirred by them, shed its ripe down over them. She thrust the sack from her head. She could not endure the weight and the heat, and laid it across her shoulders; from them it slipped unheeded. Her arms were bare from the elbow. The cold night wind stroked the arm that stayed up her scorched brain. She had prayed that God would guide her, and the guidance had led into a way of sorrows. ’It is expedient that one man should die for the people,’ those words of the High Priest recurred to Honor, and she thought how that He to whom they referred had accepted the decision. She would have died—died! O how willingly, how eagerly!—for the dear ones under the thatched roof; she would have leaped into fire, not for all, but for any one of them, for little Temperance, for dear Charity, for Martha, for Willie, for darling Pattie, for good, true Joe, for Kate, for her father of course—yes, even for Charles—but this that was demanded of her was worse than a brief spasm of pain in fire; it was a lifelong martyrdom, a sacrifice infinitely more dreadful than of life. The thrushes were singing. There was no night in the midst of June, and the birds did without sleep, or slept in the glare of midday. The only night was within the girl’s soul. There was no singing or piping there, but the groaning of a crushed spirit. She started. She was touched. She put out her hand and sighed. The horse that Langford had let them have was in the paddock; it had become much attached to Honor, and the beast had come over to her, unperceived, and was resting his head on her shoulder and rubbing it against her ear and cheek. She stroked the nose of the beast with her left hand without altering her position, mechanically, and without much diversion of her thoughts. When poor Diamond was dying in the gravel pit, Honor had sat by him and caressed him; now Diamond’s successor had come to comfort Honor, as best he could, when her girlhood was dying in anguish, passing into a womanhood of sorrow. Chink! chink! chink! a finch was perched on the topmost twig of an alder that swayed under its light weight in the wind, repeating its monotonous cry, chink! chink! chink!