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dream, in the deepest dream of all, like the one of which I told you. I was like a stone, and I was aware of you near me; you were you, quite plain, though I was a stone, and you were in great fear and I could do nothing to help you, and you were waitingfor something and the terrible thing did not happen to you, but it happened to me. I can’t tell you what it was, but it was as though all my nerves cried out in pain at once, and I was pierced through and through with a beam of some intense evil light and twisted inside out. I woke up and my heart was beating so fast that I had to gasp for breath. Do you think I had a heart attack and my heartmissed a beat? They say it feels like that. Where have you been, dearest? Where is Mr Charles?’
    Richard sat on the bed and held her hand. ‘I have had a bad experience too,’ he said. ‘I was out with Charles by the sea and as he went ahead to climb on the highest sand hill I felt very faint and fell down among a patch of stones, and when I came to myself I was in a desperate sweat of fear and hadto hurry home. So I came back running alone. It happened perhaps half an hour ago,’ he said.
    He did not tell her more. He asked, could he come back to bed and would she get breakfast? That was a thing she had not done all the years they were married.
    ‘I am as ill as you,’ said she. It was understood between them always that when Rachel was ill, Richard must be well.
    ‘You are not,’ said he,and fainted again.
    She helped him to bed ungraciously and dressed herself and went slowly downstairs. A smell of coffee and bacon rose to meet her and there was Charles, who had lit the fire, putting two breakfasts on a tray. She was so relieved at not having to get breakfast and so confused by her experience that she thanked him and called him a darling, and he kissed her hand gravely and pressedit. He had made the breakfast exactly to her liking: the coffee was strong and the eggs fried on both sides.
    Rachel fell in love with Charles. She had often fallen in love with men before and since her marriage, but it was her habit to tell Richard when this happened, as he agreed to tell her when it happened to him: so that the suffocation of passion was given a vent and there was no jealousy,forshe used to say (and he had the liberty of saying): ‘Yes, I am
in love
with so-and-so, but I only
love
you.’
    That was as far as it had ever gone. But this was different. Somehow, she did not know why, she could not own to being in love with Charles: for she no longer loved Richard. She hated him for being ill, and said that he was lazy, and a sham. So about noon he got up, but went groaningaround the bedroom until she sent him back to bed to groan.
    Charles helped her with the housework, doing all the cooking, but he did not go up to see Richard, since he had not been asked to do so. Rachel was ashamed, and apologized to Charles for Richard’s rudeness in running away from him. But Charles said mildly that he took it as no insult; he had felt queer himself that morning; it was asthough something evil was astir in the air as they reached the sand hills. She told him that she too had had the same queer feeling.
    Later she found all Lampton talking of it. The doctor maintained that it was an earth tremor, but the country people said that it had been the Devil passing by. He had come to fetch the black soul of Solomon Jones, the gamekeeper, found dead that morning in hiscottage by the sand hills.
    When Richard could go downstairs and walk about a little without groaning, Rachel sent him to the cobbler’s to get a new buckle for her shoe. She came with him to the bottom of the garden. The path ran beside a steep bank. Richard looked ill and groaned slightly as he walked, so Rachel, half in anger, half in fun, pushed him down the bank, where he fell sprawling amongthe nettles and old iron. Then she ran back into the house laughing loudly.
    Richard sighed, tried to share the joke against himself with