They decided to find their way through the lanes to Alum Bay, and then,

keeping the cross in sight, to return over the downs, with the moon-path

broad on the water before them. For the moon was rising late. Twilight,

however, rose more rapidly than they had anticipated. The lane twisted

among meadows and wild lands and copses--a wilful little lane, quite

incomprehensible. So they lost their distant landmark, the white cross.

Darkness filtered through the daylight. When at last they came to a

signpost, it was almost too dark to read it. The fingers seemed to

withdraw into the dusk the more they looked.

'We must go to the left,' said Helena.

To the left rose the downs, smooth and grey near at hand, but higher

black with gorse, like a giant lying asleep with a bearskin over his

shoulders.

Several pale chalk-tracks ran side by side through the turf. Climbing,

they came to a disused chalk-pit, which they circumvented. Having passed

a lonely farmhouse, they mounted the side of the open down, where was a

sense of space and freedom.

'We can steer by the night,' said Siegmund, as they trod upwards

pathlessly. Helena did not mind whither they steered. All places in that

large fair night were home and welcome to her. They drew nearer to the

shaggy cloak of furze.

'There will be a path through it,' said Siegmund.

But when they arrived there was no path. They were confronted by a tall,

impenetrable growth of gorse, taller than Siegmund.

'Stay here,' said he, 'while I look for a way through. I am afraid you

will be tired.' She stood alone by the walls of gorse. The lights that had flickered

into being during the dusk grew stronger, so that a little farmhouse

down the hill glowed with great importance on the night, while the

far-off in visible sea became like a roadway, large and mysterious, its

specks of light moving slowly, and its bigger lamps stationed out amid

the darkness. Helena wanted the day-wanness to be quite wiped off the

west. She asked for the full black night, that would obliterate

everything save Siegmund. Siegmund it was that the whole world meant.

The darkness, the gorse, the downs, the specks of light, seemed only to

bespeak him. She waited for him to come back. She could hardly endure

the condition of intense waiting.

He came, in his grey clothes almost invisible. But she felt him coming.

'No good,' he said, 'no vestige of a path. Not a rabbit-run.' 'Then we will sit down awhile,' said she calmly.




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