Undisturbed by the omission, Ruth went home across the flowered fields, but Mr. Pithey himself oppressed her. It seemed grossly unfit, somehow, that the life sacrifice of those dead boys should result in benefit, material benefit at any rate, to the Pitheys of the world; it shocked even one’s sense of decency. But Bertram Aurelius’s head was very soft against her throat as he dropped into sleep. The sun was very warm, the almond and honey scent of gorse was very sweet. Presently she unruffled, and began to sing the song which seemed to her to belong especially to Thorpe: “When I have reached my journey’s end And I am dead and free, I pray that God will let me go Along the flowered fields I know That look towards the sea.” So she came to the stile which led to the buttercup field, crimson and white now with sorrel and ox-eyed daisies. And standing among the flowers was a slim figure, the figure of a woman dressed all in white. Ruth stopped on the stile to look. It was so beautiful in poise and outline, it gave her that little delightful shock of joy which only beauty gives. Backed by the blue sky, bathed in the broad afternoon sunlight, it was worthy even of her flower fields. Very still the figure stood, gazing across those fields that “looked towards the sea,” and just as still, in a breathless pause, Ruth stood and watched and wondered. For gradually she became aware of a strange appearance as of fire surrounding the slim figure. It was of oval shape, vivid scarlet in colour, deepening at the base. Other colours there were in the oval, but the fiery glow of the red drowned them into insignificance. Ruth shaded her eyes with her disengaged hand, suspecting some illusion of light, but the oval held its shape under the steady scrutiny, and with a little gasp she realized that she was looking at that which the ordinary physical sight does not reveal. Vague memories of things read in old books out of Raphael Goltz’s library, descriptions of the coloured auric egg which, invisible to the human eye, surrounds all living forms, raced hurriedly through her mind, but she had read of them more with curiosity than with any thought that they would ever come within the boundary of her own consciousness. As she realized what the phenomenon was, a growing shrinking from it, a sense of horror, a feeling that there was something sinister, threatening, in the fiery implacable red of the appearance, came over her like a wave. She was glad of Bertram Aurelius’s warm little body against her own, and found she was fighting a desire to turn back and retrace her steps. A desire so wholly absurd on the face of it, that she shook herself together and resolutely moved forward. As she did so, the white figure moved too, coming down the slope of the field to meet her, and as it came the scarlet oval faded, flickered, and, so far as Ruth was concerned, seemed to go out.