-- what man had not? -- but this was different; this
unsettled the foundations of his being; it found him
vulnerable where he had never been vulnerable before;
he shrunk from it as he would shrink from
touching a white-hot surface. He was afraid
of it.

He thought of the ghastly activities inside the
house; they haunted him in confused, horrid details
amid which Lettice suffered and cried out.

He was unaware of the day wheeling splendidly
through its golden hours, of the sun swinging across
the narrow rift of the valley. At long intervals he
heard muffled hoof-beats passing on the dusty road
above. He watched a trout slip lazily out from under
the bank, and lie headed upstream, slowly waving
its fins. It recalled the trout he had left on the
porch of Hollidew's farmhouse on the night when he
had attempted to... seduce... Lettice!

The details of that occasion returned vivid, complete,
unsparing. It was a memory profoundly regrettable
because of an obscure connection with Lettice's
present danger; it too -- although he was unable
to discover why it should -- took on the dark
aspect of having helped to bring the other about.
As the memory of that night recurred to him he became
conscious of an obscure, traitorous force lurking
within him, betraying him, leading his complacency
into foolish and fatal paths, into paths

[[267]]

p266 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p267w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p268

v?