And Silvius went out noiselessly from the parlour, his hands hidden in the sleeves of his habit. Though the may was whitening in the woods, and the blue bells spread an azure mist above the green, May was a harsh and rugged month that year, with north winds blowing, and the sky hard and grey. And Dom Silvius when he mounted a quiet saddle horse and trotted away followed by two servants, drew his thick cloak about him, and was glad of his gloves and his lamb’s-wool stockings. Up in the beech wood above Goldspur the wind made a restless moan through the branches of the trees. Sometimes the sun struck through the racing clouds, and a wavering chequer of light and shadow fell on the thin forest grass. There was a shimmer of young green everywhere, yet the year seemed sad and plaintive as though chilled to heart by the north winds. Denise, wrapped in her grey cloak, wandered that morning along the grass paths of her trampled garden, brooding over the wreck thereof. Here were her thyme and lavender bushes trodden under foot, or snapped and shredded by the browsing teeth of a horse. Crushed plants peered at her pathetically from the pits where hoofs had sunk into the soft soil; a bed of pansies seemed to scowl at her with their quaint and many-coloured faces, as though reviling her for having brought such barbarians to trample them. Almost the whole of the wattle fence had fallen, dragging down into the dirt the roses that had been trained to it. Yet never had Denise’s garden been a more intimate part of herself than that May morning with the wind tossing the beech boughs against a heavy sky. What a change from yesterday, what a breaking in of violent life, what revelations, what regret! The quiet days seemed behind her, far in the distance, for the vivid present had made even the near past seem unreal. As for her own heart, Denise was almost afraid to look therein. It was like her garden, with the barriers broken, and the life of yesterday trodden into the soil. She had tried to put these passionate things from her, and to turn again to the life that she had known. There were a hundred things for her hands to do, but do them she could not, for the will in her seemed dead. Even the familiar trifles of her woodland hermitage were full of treachery and of suggestive guile. Her bed, Aymery had lain there. Her earthen pitcher, she had brought him water therein. The very stones of the path still seemed to show to her the stains of the man’s blood. Memories were everywhere, memories that would not vanish, and would not pale.