That was dangerous, for poor Pinkney was at the War.

"Do you remember Benjy?"

"Yes, rather."

But Benjy was dangerous, too; for Jerrold had given him to her. She

could feel Colin shying.

"He had a butterfly smut," he said. "Hadn't he? ...Do you remember how I

used to come and see you at Cheltenham?"

"And Grannie and Aunt Emily, and how you used to play on their piano.

And how Grannie jumped when you came down crash on those chords in the

Waldstein."

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"Do you mean the _presto?_"

"Yes. The last movement."

"No wonder she jumped. I should jump now." He turned his mournful face

to her. "Anne--I shall never be able to play again."

There was danger everywhere. In the end all ways led back to Colin's

malady.

"Oh yes, you wall when you're quite strong."

"I shall never be stronger."

"You will. You're stronger already."

She knew he was stronger. He could sleep three hours on end now and he

had left off screaming.

And still the doors were left open between their rooms at night. He was

still afraid to sleep alone; he liked to know that she was there, close

to him.

Instead of the dreams, instead of the sudden rushing, crashing horror,

he was haunted by a nameless dread. Dread of something he didn't know,

something that waited for him, something he couldn't face. Something

that hung over him at night, that was there with him in the morning,

that came between him and the light of the sun.

Anne kept it away. Anne came between it and him. He was unhappy and

frightened when Anne was not there.

It was always, "You're _not_ going, Anne?"

"Yes. But I'm coming back."

"How soon?"

And she would say, "An hour;" or, "Half an hour," or, "Ten minutes."

"Don't be longer."

"No."

And then: "I don't know how it is, Anne. But everything seems all right

when you're there, and all wrong when you're not."

The beautiful Jacobean house, the church and church-yard, Sutton's farm

and the rectory, the four cottages and the Mill, the river and its

bridge, lie close together in the small flat of the valley. Green

pastures slope up the hill behind them to the north; pink-brown arable

lands, ploughed and harrowed, are flung off to either side, east and

west.

Northwards the valley is a slender slip of green bordering the slender

river. Southwards, below the bridge, the water meadows widen out past

Sutton's farm. From the front windows of the Manor Farm house you see

them, green between the brown trunks of the elms on the road bank. From

the back you look out across orchard and pasture to the black, still

water and yellow osier beds above the Mill. Beyond the water a double

line of beeches, bare delicate branches, rounded head after rounded

head, climbs a hillock in a steep curve, to part and meet again in a

thick ring at the top.




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