‘So you ought,’ she said, turning round to look at the road. ‘Did you find the rings?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where are they?’

‘In my pocket.’

She put her hand into his pocket and took them out.

She was restless.

‘Shall we go?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he answered. And they mounted to the car once more, and left behind them this memorable battle–field.

They drifted through the wild, late afternoon, in a beautiful motion that was smiling and transcendent. His mind was sweetly at ease, the life flowed through him as from some new fountain, he was as if born out of the cramp of a womb.

‘Are you happy?’ she asked him, in her strange, delighted way.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘So am I,’ she cried in sudden ecstacy, putting her arm round him and clutching him violently against her, as he steered the motor–car.

‘Don’t drive much more,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to be always doing something.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘We’ll finish this little trip, and then we’ll be free.’

‘We will, my love, we will,’ she cried in delight, kissing him as he turned to her.

He drove on in a strange new wakefulness, the tension of his consciousness broken. He seemed to be conscious all over, all his body awake with a simple, glimmering awareness, as if he had just come come awake, like a thing that is born, like a bird when it comes out of an egg, into a new universe.

They dropped down a long hill in the dusk, and suddenly Ursula recognised on her right hand, below in the hollow, the form of Southwell Minster.

‘Are we here!’ she cried with pleasure.

The rigid, sombre, ugly cathedral was settling under the gloom of the coming night, as they entered the narrow town, the golden lights showed like slabs of revelation, in the shop–windows.

‘Father came here with mother,’ she said, ‘when they first knew each other. He loves it—he loves the Minster. Do you?’

‘Yes. It looks like quartz crystals sticking up out of the dark hollow. We’ll have our high tea at the Saracen’s Head.’

As they descended, they heard the Minster bells playing a hymn, when the hour had struck six.

Glory to thee my God this night
For all the blessings of the light—

So, to Ursula’s ear, the tune fell out, drop by drop, from the unseen sky on to the dusky town. It was like dim, bygone centuries sounding. It was all so far off. She stood in the old yard of the inn, smelling of straw and stables and petrol. Above, she could see the first stars. What was it all? This was no actual world, it was the dream–world of one’s childhood—a great circumscribed reminiscence. The world had become unreal. She herself was a strange, transcendent reality.

They sat together in a little parlour by the fire.

‘Is it true?’ she said, wondering.

“Don’t imagine that I intended to kill him in cold blood. It would only have been rigid justice if I had done so, but I could not bring myself to do it. I had long determined that he should have a show for his life if he chose to take advantage of it. Among the many billets which I have filled in America during my wandering life, I was once janitor and sweeper-out of the laboratory at York College. One day the professor was lecturing on poisons, and he showed his students some alkaloid, as he called it, which he had extracted from some South American arrow poison, and which was so powerful that the least grain meant instant death. I spotted the bottle in which this preparation was kept, and when they were all gone, I helped myself to a little of it. I was a fairly good dispenser, so I worked this alkaloid into small, soluble pills, and each pill I put in a box with a similar pill made without the poison. I determined at the time that when I had my chance my gentlemen should each have a draw out of one of these boxes, while I ate the pill that remained. It would be quite as deadly and a good deal less noisy than firing across a handkerchief. From that day I had always my pill boxes about with me. and the time had now come when I was to use them.

“It was nearer one than twelve, and a wild, bleak night, blowing hard and raining in torrents. Dismal as it was outside. I was glad within — so glad that I could have shouted out from pure exultation. If any of you gentlemen have ever pined for a thing, and longed for it during twenty long years, and then suddenly found it within your reach, you would understand my feelings. I lit a cigar, and puffed at it to steady my nerves, but my hands were trembling and my temples throbbing with excitement. As I drove, I could see old John Ferrier and sweet Lucy looking at me out of the darkness and smiling at me, just as plain as I see you all in this room. All the way they were ahead of me, one on each side of the horse until I pulled up at the house in the Brixton Road.

“There was not a soul to be seen, nor a sound to be heard, except the dripping of the rain. When I looked in at the window, I found Drebber all huddled together in a drunken sleep. I shook him by the arm, ‘It’s time to get out.’ I said.

“‘All right, cabby.’ said he.

“I suppose he thought we had come to the hotel that he had mentioned, for he got out without another word, and followed me down the garden. I had to walk beside him to keep him steady, for he was still a little top-heavy. When we came to the door, I opened it and led him into the front room. I give you my word that all the way, the father and the daughter were walking in front of us.

“‘It’s infernally dark,’ said he, stamping about.

“‘We’ll soon have a light,’ I said, striking a match and putting it to a wax candle which I had brought with me. ‘Now, Enoch Drebber,’ I continued, turning to him, and holding the light to my own face, ‘who am l?’