It was arranged next morning at breakfast that Peter should work in the field with the farmer, and that his granddaughter should clear the remains of last year\'s crop of hay from the site of the stack into the loft. Peter was grateful for this division of their work; yet, again, he was strangely disappointed. Halfway through the morning, when he had done all he could for the farmer, he sat miserably in the shadow of the hedge, fighting a blind impulse to look for the girl whose presence he detested. Surely the hot sun was burning into his brain. He went towards the house, meeting on his way the farmer\'s wife.

"I wonder if you\'d tell Bess there\'s lunch waiting to be taken. I daren\'t leave the butter this half-hour."

"Where shall I find her?" Peter asked.

"She\'s in the loft, to be sure."

Peter went slowly to the yard. He seemed to be two men—one lured by the echo of a song, the other hanging upon his feet, unwilling that he should move.

The last of the stack had disappeared into the loft, wisps of hay lying in a trail from the foot of the ladder. The yard was empty.

Peter paused at the ladder\'s foot. Then began slowly to climb.

[Pg 163]

She was resting in a far corner, and he did not see her till he had stepped from the ladder. Then he found himself looking down at her stretched at length upon piles of sweet hay. She had fallen asleep easily as a cat, and, unconscious of her pose, was freely beautiful. Her loveliness caught at Peter. Could she but lie asleep for ever, he could for ever watch. Sleep had smoothed from her features the impudent knowledge of her power. Her beauty now lay softly upon her, held in the pure curves of her throat.

Peter leaned breathlessly towards her, filling his eyes. Had he really feared this magic? Such loveliness as this his soul had caught at in scattered dreams, and now it fronted him, and he had feared to take it. Surely he had fancied that the smile of her perfect mouth was hateful, that her eyes, so beautifully lidded, had in their pride and gluttony dismayed him.

Peter dropped softly beside her. She seemed too like a fairy to be rudely touched. He delicately brushed her lips in a kiss scarcely to be felt. She started and sat upright, alert in every fibre.

Peter saw again the creature who had troubled him. He was looking into greedy pools where her lids had seemed as curtains to hide an intolerable purity.

"You kissed me?"

"It was not you," Peter muttered.

"Funny boy! How long have you been here?"

[Pg 164]

"I have come to say that lunch is waiting."

"Peter." She sang the name in her low voice, as though she were trying the sound of it.

"You kissed me, Peter. Tell me. How do I look, asleep?"

Peter closed his eyes.

"You are beautiful."

"Even you can see that," she flashed.

Peter felt she was profaning her loveliness. He kept his eyes painfully closed. She looked at him, partly in anger, partly in contempt.

"Good boy. So very good," she murmured.

As he opened his eyes, she dropped lightly towards him. In a flash she had taken his neck between her hands, and he felt her lips and teeth upon the muscles of his neck, where her eyes had rested when first he had read them.

Then she nestled there with a little purr.

Peter broke roughly away, and she laughed.

"Good boy." She mocked him again from the ladder as she went down.

Peter waited with clenched hands till the trembling of the ladder had ceased. Then he looked into the yard. She had not yet disappeared. A young farmer had ridden into the drive, and was talking to her from his horse. She seemed to be deprecating his anger. They paused in their talk as Peter drew near them. The man was good-looking, with honest eyes. But he looked at Peter with angry suspicion, carefully[Pg 165] searching his face, as though he desired to remember him if they should meet again.

That afternoon Peter left the farm and walked into the country. Thunder echoed among the hills, seeming the voice of his trouble. He was humiliated by the lure of a woman he disliked and feared. He vehemently told himself that he would break away. But he continually felt the strong tug of her sex. He shook under the pressure of her mouth, his neck yet bitten with that strange caress. He shunned the memory, yet returned to it, thrilling with an excitement, sweet even as it stung him.

The thunder waited among the hills all that day. As the evening wore, and Peter, back at the farm, watched the summer lightning come and go, it seemed as though batteries were closing in from all points of the heaven. But the sky was still open to the stars, and there was no rain.

Peter stood with the farmer by the garden gate. He told Peter that the little hill where they united was mysteriously immune, in a tempest, from the water which deluged the valley.

As Peter, with his thoughts full of the farmer\'s granddaughter, listened to the farmer\'s tale of a dry storm which, with never a spot of rain, had fired the stack in the yard, it seemed as though, now and then, he could hear her low singing. It floated on the heavy air. Peter could scarcely tell whether it were really her voice or an echo in[Pg 166] his tired brain. He strained his ears, between the pauses of the farmer\'s talk. The low note swelled and died.