VIII
And Jane went out of the big house with the Director’s kiss upon her lips and his words in her ears, into the liquid light and supernatural warmth of the garden and across the wet lawn (birds were everywhere) and past the seesaw and the greenhouse and the piggeries, going down all the time, down to the lodge, descending the ladder of humility. First she thought of the Director, then she thought of Maleldil. Then she thought of her obedience and the setting of each foot before the other became a kind of sacrificial ceremony. And she thought of children, and of pain and death. And now she was half way to the lodge, and thought of Mark and of all his sufferings. When she came to the lodge she was surprised to see it all dark and the door shut. As she stood at the door with one hand on the latch, a new thought came to her. How if Mark did not want her-not tonight, nor in that way, nor any time, nor in any way? How if Mark were not there, after all? A great gap-of relief or of disappointment, no one could say-was made in her mind by this thought. Still she did not move the latch. Then she noticed that the window, the bedroom window, was open. Clothes were piled on a chair inside the room so carelessly that they lay over the silclass="underline" the sleeve of a shirt-Mark’s shirt-even hung over down the outside wall. And in all this damp, too. How exactly like Mark! Obviously it was high time she went in.
THE END.