He stooped under the low boughs of a very large yew tree that stood just back from the path. She crept after him. It was really a very good shelter. Byrne sat on the ledge of a root, Helena beside him. He looked under the flap of the black branches down the valley. The grey rain was falling steadily; the dark hollow under the tree was immersed in the monotonous sound of it. In the open, where the bright young corn shone intense with wet green, was a fold of sheep. Exposed in a large pen on the hillside, they were moving restlessly; now and again came the “tong-ting-tong” of a sheep-bell. First the grey creatures huddled in the high corner, then one of them descended and took shelter by the growing corn lowest down. The rest followed, bleating and pushing each other in their anxiety to reach the place of desire, which was no whit better than where they stood before. “That’s like us all,” said Byrne whimsically. “We’re all penned out on a wet evening, but we think, if only we could get where someone else is, it would be deliciously cosy.” Helena laughed swiftly, as she always did when he became whimsical and fretful. He sat with his head bent down, smiling with his lips, but his eyes melancholy. She put her hand out to him. He took it without apparently observing it, folding his own hand over it, and unconsciously increasing the pressure. “You are cold,” he said. “Only my hands, and they usually are,” she replied gently. “And mine are generally warm.” “I know that,” she said. “It’s almost the only warmth I get now—your hands. They really are wonderfully warm and close-touching.” “As good as a baked potato,” he said. She pressed his hand, scolding him for his mockery. “So many calories per week—isn’t that how we manage it?” he asked. “On credit?” She put her other hand on his, as if beseeching him to forgo his irony, which hurt her. They sat silent for some time. The sheep broke their cluster, and began to straggle back to the upper side of the pen. “Tong-tong, tong,” went the forlorn bell. The rain waxed louder. Byrne was thinking of the previous week. He had gone to Helena’s home to read German with her as usual. She wanted to understand Wagner in his own language. In each of the arm-chairs, reposing across the arms, was a violin-case. He had sat down on the edge of one seat in front of the sacred fiddle. Helena had come quickly and removed the violin. “I shan’t knock it—it is all right,” he had said, protesting. This was Siegmund’s violin, which Helena had managed to purchase, and Byrne was always ready to yield its precedence. “It was all right,” he repeated. “But you were not,” she had replied gently.