‘Of course I’m not.’ She closed the door after him, saying ‘good-night’ in a clear voice for the benefit of the problematical constable. He heard her lock the door and slip an iron bar across into its sockets. The lighted windows went black. He slipped round to the back of the house and stood waiting in the angle that it made with an outhouse where dry bracken was stored. For a long time, as it seemed, he stood there staring at the faint and frosty stars. Then the door opened softly. She did not speak, but he stole on tiptoe to the door and entered the kitchen. Inside it was quite dark, for the shutters were closed and the fire banked down. He could not see her, being only conscious of her warm and fragrant presence. He groped in the dark, suddenly finding her face on his own. ‘My . . . how cold you are!’ she whispered. Half an hour later she let him out into the yard, with more tender whispers of farewell and warnings that her father slept lightly. For a few minutes he stood away from the moonlight in the shadow of the house, bewildered, stunned. He saw the white road stretching in the direction of Chapel Green and Wolfpits, but it meant no more to him than if it had led to the world’s end. He was no longer a part of the world. He towered above it supreme and isolated in the flame of his own throbbing exaltation. He had no need of friends or houses or rest, no memory of the past, no thought for the future. He stood there self-sufficient and unassailable. A little later he became aware of the fact that his feet were carrying him automatically over the moon-lit road toward the hills, but he was almost unconscious of his progress, and it filled him with a sort of mild surprise when he saw familiar landmarks of the road loom up before him, grow clear, and fall away behind. His footsteps rang upon the iron road as though he were shod with steel. From the brow of the hill above Wolfpits he saw the basin of the Folly Brook brimmed with mist. The gables of the house rose up into the moonlight, the hills stood black behind. Under the heavy chestnuts of the avenue it was almost dark; the water in the ruts had frozen to a thin crust so that the surface was curiously splashed with moonlight and with ice. Fifty yards in front of him he saw a figure moving with lurches from side to side of the lane. At first he thought it was a stray bullock, but there was something human in its movements and so he leapt to the conclusion that it was old man Drew rolling home drunk with sweet turnip from the cottage of some friend. The figure leaned for a moment against a stone wall, and Abner, coming abreast of it, saw that the drunken man was George Malpas. ‘Hallo, George, what’s up?’ he called. ‘God, Abner, is that you?’ George murmured thickly. ‘I haven’t half got a drop, I haven’t!’ The situation amused George so much that he shook with weak laughter.