"Both you and mother," she said, "sit there scheming to make life bearable for the Ox. I call my husband the Ox. He's repulsive: like a swollen animal. Well . . . you can't do it." The lighted doorway was vacant. Father Consett sighed. "I told you this was an evil place," he said. "In the deep forests. She'd not have such evil thoughts in another place." Mrs. Satterthwaite said: "I'd rather you didn't say that, Father. Sylvia would have evil thoughts in any place." "Sometimes," the priest said, "at night I think I hear the claws of evil things scratching on the shutters. This was the last place in Europe to be christianised. Perhaps it wasn't ever even christianised and they're here yet." Mrs. Satterthwaite said: "It's all very well to talk like that in the day-time. It makes the place seem romantic. But it must be near one at night. And things are bad enough as it is." "They are," Father Consett said. "The devil's at work." Sylvia drifted back into the room with a telegram of several sheets. Father Consett held it close to one of the candles to read, for he was short-sighted. "All men are repulsive," Sylvia said; "don't you think so, mother?" Mrs. Satterthwaite said: "I do not. Only a heartless woman would say so." "Mrs. Vanderdecken," Sylvia went on, "says all men are repulsive and it's woman's disgusting task to live beside them." "You've been seeing that foul creature?" Mrs. Satterthwaite said. "She's a Russian agent. And worse!" "She was at Gosingeux all the time we were," Sylvia said. "You needn't groan. She won't split on us. She's the soul of honour." "It wasn't because of that I groaned, if I did," Mrs. Satterthwaite answered. The priest, from over his telegram, exclaimed: "Mrs. Vanderdecken! God forbid." Sylvia's face, as she sat on the sofa, expressed languid and incredulous amusement. "What do you know of her?" she asked the Father. "I know what you know," he answered, "and that's enough." "Father Consett," Sylvia said to her mother, "has been renewing his social circle." "It's not," Father Consett said, "amongst the dregs of the people that you must live if you don't want to hear of the dregs of society." Sylvia stood up. She said: "You'll keep your tongue off my best friends if you want me to stop and be lectured. But for Mrs. Vanderdecken I should not be here, returned to the fold!" Father Consett exclaimed: "Don't say it, child. I'd rather, heaven help me, you had gone on living in open sin." Sylvia sat down again, her hands listlessly in her lap. "Have it your own way," she said, and the Father returned to the fourth sheet of the telegram. "What does this mean?" he asked. He had returned to the first sheet. "This here: '_Accept resumption yoke_'?" he read, breathlessly. "Sylvia," Mrs. Satterthwaite said, "go and light the spirit lamp for some tea. We shall want it."