"I can't tell one of your learners from t'other, miss," Adams said. "I've no call."

"Exactly," Marchbanks agreed, to humour him. "But you haven't noticed anything unusual?"

"If I was in your place," the man replied, "I'd speak over the telephone with the station."

"Yes, I've done so, Adams."

"They can't have passed that way, then. And the coach halt?"

"Of course," she patiently said. "You don't imagine we've been seated idly by," she said, going over in her mind again the guarded, embarrassed enquiries she had made.

"Well, it's got me beat," he said.

"You see, I just wondered if you might have marked down some little detail, all over the woods in your day's work, and trained to be observant."

"I don't know about trained to be observant, miss?"

"Why yes, naturally, in the course of your duties. Foresters always are," she said, to flatter him.

"It's not me you should enquire of," he said, at last. "Some of the creatures will for ever hang around Mr Rock's place, any day of the week you care to name."

"I know," she said to encourage the man. "He has those animals," and remembered the cat on her Jap, the goose, and the pig, all white.

"Well, to my way of thought, Mr Rock's your money, miss, if you'll excuse me now, because if you've nothing special today I should get on with our logs for the firewood."

"There's just one matter, Adams," she said, and ordered fir branches to be brought up, in case room could be found. Then she dismissed him. At the door, however, he turned back. "It's the overstrain, there you are," he announced. "They overtax their strength," he said, and went.

* * *

A great beech had fallen a night or two earlier, in full leaf, lay now with its green leaves turned to pale gold, as though by the sea. It had brought more vast limbs down along with it, so, in the bright morning, at the thickest of the wood, colourless sky was suddenly opened to Elizabeth and Sebastian above a cliff of green. The wreckage beneath standing beeches was lit at this place by a glare of sunlight concerted on flat, dying leaves which hung on to life by what was broken off, the small branches joining those larger that met the arms, which in their turn grew from the fallen column of the beech, all now an expiring gold of faded green. A world through which the young man and his girl had been meandering, in dreaming shade through which sticks of sunlight slanted to spill upon the ground, had at this point been struck to a blaze, and where their way had been dim, on a sea bed past grave trunks, was now this dying, brilliant mass which lay exposed, a hidden world of spiders working on its gold, the webs these made a field of wheels and spokes of wet silver. The sudden sunlight on Elizabeth and Sebastian as, arms about one another's waists, they halted to wonder and surmise, was a load, a great cloak to clothe them, like a depth of warm water that turned the man's brown city outfit to a drowned man's clothes, the sun was so heavy, so encompassing betimes.

"It will be hot," she said, as though stroking him.

"I love you," he said. She pretended to ignore it.

"I wonder what brought her down," she said. She might, from the tone, have had in mind a middle-aged woman he'd seduced.

"Oh Liz, I do love you, and love you," he replied.

"Adams won't like this," she said, and turned with a smile which was for him alone to let him take her, and helped his heart find hers by fastening her mouth on his as though she were an octopus that had lost its arms to the propellers of a tug, and had only its mouth now with which, in a world of the hunted, to hang onto wrecked spars.

"Darling," she said in a satisfied voice, coming up to breathe.

"Help," another girl's voice then distinctly uttered, close to these lovers. Sebastian felt Elizabeth go stiff. Neither of them spoke.

"Help," it came again. Sebastian stepped sharp away from his love.

"A snooper," he said with a little hiss. "A Paul Pry."

"Who is it, oh dear. .?" Elizabeth called out. She had at once put on her vagueness for protection in the circumstances.

"Help," the voice called once more, louder. By this time both had gathered its direction, which was left-handed to the deepest of the stricken beech. Sebastian began to force his way through and, as Elizabeth cried out, "Now do mind, take care, it's your best suit," he had parted a screen of leaves that hung before him bent to the tide, like seaweed in the ocean, and his pale face, washed, shaved, hair cut and brushed, in this sun a bandit, he looked down on a girl stretched out, whom he did not know to be Merode, whose red hair was streaked across a white face and matted by salt tears, who was in pyjamas and had one leg torn to the knee. A knee which, brilliantly polished over bone beneath, shone in this sort of pool she had made for herself in the fallen world of birds, burned there like a piece of tusk burnished by shifting sands, or else a wheel revolving at such speed that it had no edges and was white, thus communicating life to ivory, a heart to the still, and the sensation of a crash to this girl who lay quiet, reposed.

"What are you about? Come off at once," Sebastian said, unaware that he had been shocked into a close parody of Edge upon his recognising Institute pyjamas. As there were three hundred students he could not be blamed if he did not know the girl, although he was at fault in forgetting, as he did until too late, because of the kisses, that there were two young ladies absent or adrift.

"I must ask you to come away off," he repeated, like Miss Edge.

"I can't, I'm hurt," she said. After which she added, as though terrified, "Oh Mr Birt."

"My dear girl, we can't have this," he said, clambering down. And then became confused. Because her soft body, stretched out, was covered only in thin geranium red cotton, it lay with all grace and carelessness, the breasts lightly covered and the long limbs, and he saw, so that it interrupted his breathing, that she had mud on the white of leg below the knee, with enamelled toes in sandals caked with mud. Sun, through the bright leaves, lit all this in violent dots, spotting the cotton with drips as of wet paint, and making small candle lamps of flesh. Then he was reprieved, now that he was so at her side, for she reached behind and brought out some nondescript overcoat which she pushed over her middle. A schoolmaster mind knew she must have put this away at the back before she called. Thus he was saved because she had made him suspicious.

"Can't you walk?" he asked, unkindly.

"Yes," she said.

"What is it, dear?" Miss Rock demanded.

"You're not to worry, I can manage," he shouted back.

"But what will, in heaven's name, what is it?" Elizabeth insisted. "Look," he said, to the girl he still did not know for Merode, and in his natural voice once more. "Hang on to me." He was frowning.

"I can manage, Mr Birt," she said, awkwardly struggled up to turn a drooping back and shrugged herself into the coat.

"But there must be some explanation," he said, in another severe imitation of Miss Edge.

In reply she just walked out of the place she had made for herself, and this when he had laboriously climbed down to her. She was gone. He found a rent in his own trouser leg and scowled. Then went out after.