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It may well be believed, with a piratical amorist like Zoyland, that it was not long before Persephone's body, whatever happened to her heart, belonged, as far as it could belong to anyone, to this herculean ravisher.

In the matter of pure lust, Will did not get half the satisfaction from his taking of Percy that he got from his dallying with Eudoxia. But in every other respect—aye! how he did enjoy the unequalled circumstances of these violent embraces!

The gurgling of the water beneath this keel-less vessel, the rubbing of the rope against the bark of a little bush, the drooping down as if in sympathy with his heathen satisfaction, of the whole cloudy heaven, the smell of the river-mud, the glittering slide from the high zenith of a falling star in the direction of North Wooton and Croscombe, and most wonderful of all and actually simultaneous with the apogee of his delight, the sudden rising of a great, broad-winged heron and its heavy retreat over the moonlit marshes towards Westholme and Hearne House— all these things gave to the bastard's sensuality that sort of romantic elemental margin, which was the thing of all things that he relished most in the world. Thus, it may be imagined in what a mood of tender gratitude he took Percy back, holding her hand tight, very tight, and repeatedly kissing it.

As they moved along, he thought to himself—“Girls really ought to be allowed everything they want in this world, when they can give a person such entrancing pleasure!”

He felt in a delicious mood now; at peace with Man and at peace with God; and he would have got home in this mood, if it had not been, as.he approached the house, that he caught sight of a particular branch of a particular tree which he had noted— it was blasted by lightning—while the Marquis was telling him of the sale of the factories and of the leasing of the shops.

Quite irrelevantly, and not very discreetly, he burst out, upon catching sight of this branch—“The old man brought bad news, tonight, kid . . . devilish news. He's selling I don't know what of his Glastonbury property to I don't know who; and leasing, for an ordinary person's life-term, what he can't sell! It's old Geard, of course, who's at the bottom of it; but it'll be terribly, terribly serious for Philip. I ought really to let Philip know tonight, so that he can take measures, if there are any measures to take! He says distinctly that he's sold at least a third of the Crow dye works. They are only the newest ones—but still! I was perfectly flabbergasted. I knew he owned the land, of course; but I somehow thought Philip had built all the dye works. But of course he didn't! He only improved the old ones out by the cemetery. And it now appears he's only had these new ones on a lease; and this lease is now up. If these people—Geard and the rest—don't choose to lease 'em to him again, they can kick him out. And they will kick him out! There's no doubt about it. They all hate him like the devil; and nothing would give 'em more pleasure than to bring him down a few pegs.”

Persephone herself was a little surprised and shocked by what she felt in response to this. For many dark and complicated reasons she actually felt a spasm of pleasure at hearing of this disaster to Philip. She had been deeply piqued, for one thing, by his obvious ability to get on perfectly well without her. For another thing, she had accepted, for good and all, her husband's views as to the injustice of the capitalist system. But there was a much subtler reason than either of these for Percy's throb of uncousinly pleasure at hearing this startling news. Philip's chief hold upon her imagination had been her idea of him as a swift raptorial man of action, competent, unscrupulous, deadly. But this news showed him as outwitted and something of a fool; and this development left the fortress of her heart free for Zoyland. She was in her queer fashion watching with an intense inner interest her feelings about Zoyland. She felt that she was still, though they were far from the boat, under the spell of his portentous magnetism, of his overpowering physique. After Wookey Hole, when Philip had loosened his hold upon her, she had very quickly become mistress of herself. She had shaken off her contact with him as if it had been no more than a kiss. But something surely . . . deeper than that . . . had been touched by Zoyland's possession of her in the hay-boat. Furtively in the darkness she allowed herself to fondle the man's muscular wTrist; and then from his wrist her long slim hand slipped down to his great swaying hips. Here, as her fingers strayed, she found one of the leather straps of his braces hanging loose; for when he had been buying that set of heavy tea-cups at Wollop's. he had been persuaded to purchase a new pair of braces for himself by the youth who read Nietzsche and these articles his powerful fingers found it very difficult to button. When he felt her knuckles against his side the spontaneous intimacy of the gesture tickled his fancy as much as her actual touch tickled his ribs; and with a deep-drawn chuckle he stopped dead.

“Do it up, if you can, kid!” he laughed. “It's beaten me, that bit of leather!”

She put both her hands to it and finally—though not without an effort—she got it fastened. This was the first time in Persephone's whole life that she had buttoned a man's button.

It was a quaint little incident, but in its particular kind of intimacy it affected some nerve in her wild, perverse nature that sent a delicious shiver through her whole frame. She felt like some elemental creature of the night, some wandering elfish thing, that was taking care of a primeval earth-giant. No woman in all Glastonbury had less of the maternal in her composition than this erratic boy-girl; but by thinking of herself as an elf-waif and of her paramour as a fairy-tale giant, she made of this trifling incident, as they stood there in the river-scented darkness, something that was significant and even symbolical.

To their surprise—for human beings are very like animals in their expectation of finding what they have left exactly as it was when they left it—they found, on their re-entrance into the parlour, Nell and Dave and Mat Dekker seated round a small cold supper. Dave rose quickly to get them chairs, for their places at the. table had been prepared for them; and while they sat down, they could hear Zookey Pippard crooning and murmuring to the baby in the room above. In the centre of the table, side by side with the vase of small bronze-coloured chrysanthemums, Nell had placed the little golden cup; and this small object at once became again the topic of general conversation.

Although Mat Dekker had made a stubborn struggle with his religious conscience not to allow his overwhelming feeling for his son's mistress to betray itself in any overt manner, his whole being had been so stirred by these long, sweet, lonely hours, in semi-darkness, with her and her child, that he flooded her, saturated her, drowned her in the heady worship of his suppressed passion. It was therefore from an atmosphere of limitless and enfolding idolatry that Nell found herself faced, at first by the bodily absence, and then by the absence of mind, of her husband and her sister-in-law. She had kept Mat Dekker and Dave waiting half an hour for their supper; but then, when the absent ones had not returned, she had told Zookey to bring in “all there was in the house.”

Mat Dekker was too exci^d to eat very much; but half his normal appetite was enough, with the aid of Dave, who was ravenous for food, to dispose of the more substantial viands that Zookey had been able to find, and there was little left for Zoyland and Percy except sponge cake and black-currant jam.

Now, although suppressed desire is destructive of appetite, satisfied desire is creative of extreme hunger, and happy as Zoyland and Percy were in their secret union they both felt a very sharp craving for some kind of solid and substantial nourishment.

Below the surface of the most civilised human beings, the hunger-lust darts and snaps like a fish, snatches and rends like a bird, growls like a wolf, snarls like a panther, buzzes like a hornet, bleats like a sheep and stamps like a bull; and there is nothing so aggravating to hungry stomachs as the sight of dirty plates pushed away from satisfied rival stomachs. Mrs. Pippard was so tired and cross after her party that Nell had not liked to demur at anything she did; and indeed when cold ham, tinned sardines, and scrambled eggs appeared, she knew well enough that the resources of her larder were exhausted.

Unfortunately, nothing looks more tantalizing to hungry eyes than bits of cold toast upon which scrambled eggs have been served, or more offensive to the aesthetic sense of hunger—for hunger has its aesthetic sense—than the scales and tails of sardines upon oily plates.

Thus, however happy the two adulterers were in each other's society, and whatever secrets of this curious neutral night they brought into Whitelake Cottage with them, when they found themselves confronted by the sponge cake, it was very difficult to retain their high spirits.

“Percy would like a couple of boiled eggs and a cup of tea/” cried Zoyland in a casual, airy, jaunty manner.

“I'm sorry,” said Nell, “but the kettle is cold and there are no more eggs.”

“Well . . . anyway . . . let's have some cheese.” Zoyland's voice had become a good deal less airy. But Mat Dekker broke in:

“I'm so sorry—I told you how it might be------” he muttered,

looking anxiously at Nell, for he had finished every bit of her excellent cheddar cheese before he proceeded to light his pipe. “I'm—afraid—I ate—more than my fair share of the sardines,” said Dave anxiously, “but I expect there is------” and he looked at Nell with a pathetic masculine faith in the unlimited resources of feminine providing—“I expect there is something” “Well, I know what I can get for Percy, anyway,” cried Zoyland angrily, leaping up and rushing into the kitchen.

“Take off your boots, if you go up to your room,” warned Nell. “He'll be sure to hear; and Zookey has only just this minute got him off to sleep.”

But Zoyland took not the slightest notice of this request; and sure enough in a short time they could all hear the creaking sound of his heavy steps as he walked through the attic anteroom into his smoking-room, Nell rose indignantly to her feet, listening intently.

Persephone helped herself to a piece of thin bread and butter, a piece that had already acquired a certain dry consistency, which indicated that it had been left over from tea. From somewhere outside, away to the back of the house, where there was a clump of naked larches, came the barking of a fox; but for once Mat Dekker was oblivious to this exciting sound.

His .eyes were fixed with a furious sympathy upon Nell's white face; his long fingers were clenching themselves under the table, their nails pressing into the palms of his hands. As for Dave lie was occupied in a vain attempt to open a ginger-beer bottle.

“You'd like some of this, ivouldnt youV he whispered across the table to his wife. Then he added in a still lower voice, ”It won't open though."

In the silence that ensued everybody could catch the audible lifting up of an angry infant's moan, a moan full of a self-pity that amounted to anguish.

“He's woke up,” cried Nell, biting her lip, and casting a wild look of blind appeal upon Mat Dekker.

“Hush . . . listen!” whispered Persephone.

And while in the further distance the heavy tramp of Zoyland's boots was audible, they all caught the lilt of an esoteric jumble of West-country rhymes, chanted over the cradle.

"Oon, two, dree, vour . . . Bells of Girt Sedgemoor! Who can meake panceake 'Thout fat or vlour?

Zee-Zaw, Harry's mother,

Sold her bed and laid in clover,

Wadden she a dirty slut

Da zell her bed and lay in dirt?

'Pon my life an' honner! Gwine to Mark's Tower, Who should I see, But Zookey's Babee? 'Pon my life an' honner!"

In the interior of Whitelake Cottage this singular lullaby was very audible and not devoid of significance. But its effect upon the infant was the reverse of soothing. Something in the sound of the child's crying, when it burst out again now, made Mat Dekker think of a small vivisected dog he had heard howling once and that he could never get out of his head. Nell's face became distorted with anger. She felt as if each step Zoyland took, upon those creaking boards up there, was taken upon the outstretched nerves of Sam's child! She could see the way its iunny chin, the very replica of Sam's, was wrinkling itself up in its blind suffering!

But she clutched the back of her chair and tried to force herself to remain where she was. “If I go up,” she thought, “”I'll say something to Will which he'll never forgive—and which I never shall want him to forgive!"

But Will had got what he wanted now; and the creaking up there ceased, as he came down the outside steps and entered the kitchen.

“I'll have something really decent for you to drink in a minute, Percy!” he shouted through the oak door, pushing it open for a second with his hand.

Nell sank down mechanically into her chair; but some new thought had entered her head—some desperate thought—and she sat staring into vacancy, disregarding them all.

The child's crying grew louder and louder in the room above —Zookey was scolding it now; but that was even less effective than her “oon, two, dree, vour.” Dave had recommenced his attempts to loosen the ginger-beer stopper; and Persephone was swallowing her second piece of dry bread and butter.

“I can't think how------” began Mat Dekker, half-rising from

his chair. There were beads of sweat on his forehead and his whole face had darkened to a dusky red. Zoyland came rushing in now from the kitchen, opening the oak door with a heavy kick and letting it close behind him. In one hand he held the bottle; in the other three tumblers.

“Here's something that'll make you forget whether we've starved you in this house or not!” he shouted, pouring out a stiff glass of the stuff for Percy. It was of Percy and Percy alone he thought. Everybody else was non-existent. It was as though he and Percy were still by themselves on the bottom of the hay-boat.

“I can't think why------” stammered Mat Dekker, staring at

Nell in helpless, pitiful expectancy.

If Zoyland saw only Persephone just then, Mat Dekker all that evening had seen nothing but Nell!