"Go--why, it's barely five." "But I must." He rose hurriedly. For a moment they faced each other over the unfinished meal, then Quentin came towards her. "You're frightened, Janey?" "Yes." "Of me?" "No." "But of yourself...." She began to tremble violently, and suddenly his arms were round her, her sobs shaking them both. "My little Janey...." "Quentin, Quentin ... be merciful ... I'm in your power." He looked down into her drowning eyes, at the pure outlines of her face, seen palely through the dusk. "I'm in your power," she repeated vaguely. "Janey ... Janey," he whispered, "you're in my power ... but I'm in Love's. Love is stronger than either of us--and Love says 'Over the gates!--over the gates!'" CHAPTER VIII BRAMBLETYE The next few days were to Nigel like a piece of steep hill to a cart-horse. There was only one comfort--he felt no temptation to seek oblivion again as he had sought it at the Bells. He turned surlily from the men he had looked to for alleviation--he knew they could not give it. All they could do was to cover his wounds with septic rags--they had no oil and wine for him. So he put down his head, seeing nothing but the little patch of ground over which he moved, planted his feet firmly, and pulled from the shoulder. Perhaps it was because he saw such a little of his way that he did not notice Janey was doing pretty much the same thing--with the difference that she fretted more, like a horse with a bearing-rein, which cannot pull from the collar. Side by side they were plunging up the hill of difficulty--and yet neither saw how the other strained. Len vaguely realised that something was wrong with Janet, but he put it down to her anxiety about Nigel. An atmosphere of reticence and misunderstanding had settled on Sparrow Hall, frankness had gone and effects were put down to the wrong causes. Len tried to help Janey by helping Nigel. It struck him that his brother would be happier if he had less pottering work to do. So he took upon himself all the monotonous details of the yard, and asked Nigel to see to the larger matters, which involved much tramping in the country round. One day towards the end of October, Len asked him to attend an auction at Forest Row. He went by train, but as the auction ended rather earlier than he expected, he decided to walk home. It was a pale afternoon, smelling of rain. The sky was covered with soft mackerel clouds, dappled with light, and the distances were mysterious and tender. Nigel had a special love for distances--for three years he had not been able to look further than a wall some thirty yards off, except when he lifted his eyes to that one far view prison could not rob him of, the sky. Now the stretch of distant fields, the blur of distant woods, the gleam of distant windows in distant farms, even the distant gape of Oxted chalk-pit among the Surrey hills, filled him with an ineffable sense of quiet and liberty.