of a crew-yard and the butt of a barn.

“Are you going to Shortlands to dinner?” Ursula asked him suddenly. He started.

“Good God!” he said. “Shortlands! Never again. Not that. Besides we should be too late.”

“Where are we going then—to the Mill?”

“If you like. Pity to go anywhere on this good dark night. Pity to come out of it, really. Pity we can’t stop in the good darkness. It is better than anything ever would be—this good immediate darkness.”

She sat wondering. The car lurched and swayed. She knew there was no leaving him, the darkness held them both and contained them, it was not to be surpassed. Besides she had a full mystic knowledge of his suave loins of darkness, dark-clad and suave, and in this knowledge there was some of the inevitability and the beauty of fate, fate which one asks for, which one accepts in full.