“Joyce, dear Joyce ...” He put his hands on her shoulders. “I must tell you, I must. I’ve waited so long. Oh, it’s so long since I’ve done anything I want to, I’ve forgotten how. Joyce, you don’t know how I needed you. I was hungry, I was a beggar, you fed me with laughter and taught me how to suffer. You taught me how to love, yes, everything I love I love a thousand times better because I know you. God help me, I love even Phyllis better because of you....” With a gesture of pathos and despair she buried her face in his coat. They heard the others beginning to descend. To postpone for a few moments the necessity of speech, he turned wildly to the car and again started the engine. As Ruth appeared at the foot of the stairs, her mouth opening to say something, he speeded the motor to a roar. “Oh, George,” piped Ruth as they were walking back to the house. “I’ve left my scarf. I must have dropped it in the loft. Ben’ll get it. Have you locked the barn?” “No, we don’t lock anything around here.” “You laugh at locksmiths,” said Joyce. “I’ll go,” George said. “I can find it easier than Ben. There’s a flashlight in the car.” He walked back to the stable. A lemonade-coloured moon was swimming above the maple tree. He did not bother to get the torch but slipped up the stair, moving noiselessly on rubber soles. The scarf was lying just at the top, where the steps emerged into the old harness room. He was about to glance into the hayloft, to satisfy his sentimental vision of how it would have looked to him and Joyce, a cavern of country fragrance, a musk of dead summers still banked there in pourried mounds. He was halted, with a catch of breath, by murmuring voices. He peered round the doorpost. A slope of powdery moonlight carved a pale alley through the heavy shadow. On his rug, spread toward the open window, sat Nounou and Brady’s man, ardently enlaced. The whispering pair, engrossed in rudimentary endearment, were oblivious of all else. It amused him to reflect that they must have been hiding anxiously somewhere in the loft while the visitors palavered near them. A single cricket, embalmed in the hay, chirped sweet airy prosits--solitary lutanist (or prothalamist) of the occasion. George stood smitten by the vulgar irony. There was cruel farce and distemper in finding his own dear torment parodied in these terms of yokel dalliance. The parable was only too plain. This back-yard amour was as rich in Nature’s eyes as the kingliest smoke-room story of the Old Testament. Nature, genial procuress, who impartially honours the breach and the observance. With the crude humour of the small boy, never quite buried in any man, he emitted a loud groaning wail of mimic anguish. He thrilled with malicious mirth to see the horrified swains leap up in panic. He tiptoed stealthily away, leaving them aghast. This has got to end, he said to himself. XIV