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Farmers stood in a ring and stared with interest at a hillock of earth judging its points. The women watched the chief mourner. By the rules of village life Elizabeth should now break down. Then after a brief struggle for the privilege one would put her arm round the girl and weep with her. Later they would be asked to accompany her back for refreshment. Their suspicions regarding Elizabeth’s birth and her moral character were confirmed when she abruptly turned her back on the grave.
    She said to Andrews in a voice like frozen straw, ‘For God’s sake get rid of these people. I don’t want them. I don’t want them.’ The mist opened a little, closed again and she was gone.
    Andrews stood alone. He wanted to turn and run and put a wall of mist between him and that gathering of amazed eyes. Loneliness and fear were like the emptiness of hunger to his belly. If he took six steps away he would be lost to all the world in a blanket of white wool. He could find a childish comfort, bury his head beneath the bed-clothes and fear no more the creaking of old furniture, deep in a darkness within a darkness. Why should any man be plagued as he had ever been plagued, with all the instincts – desires, fears, comforts – of a child and yet possess the wisdom of the man? In these moments of crisis he felt physically drawn in two – an agonizing stretch of the nerves. One part of him said, ‘Hide yourself in this mist. You will see no one and nothing can hurt you. You will be comforted.’ The other part said, ‘Fool! How they would talk.’ He was the girl’s brother. He must act on a little longer as her brother. That was the only safe way.
    He said to them – yet not to them but only to those amazed and offended eyes, ‘My sister’s upset. Forgive us if we don’t invite you back. She must be alone for a little. You will understand that it has been a great shock.’ Very unconvincing and stiff his voice sounded to himself. He watched for any relaxation of the inquiry in the ring of eyes. Then he waited no longer but walked away. He stumbled as he went on a stone, which had fallen before its time from a gravedigger’s spade.
    When he had walked a dozen yards he struck against an iron railing and the chill of the metal brought him part of the way towards consciousness. He felt his way along the rail gingerly with the tips of his fingers, finding relief in the slight pain he suffered from the stinging cold. When his feet, groping through an invisible gap, felt the broken ruts of the road beneath them, he waited. He had but to follow it half a mile to his left hand, so he calculated, to come upon the lights of the cottage. Yet there was no possible excuse to return. He should be thankful for the shelter of a night and the bare charity that had left him free. Bare charity enough, he thought, growing slowly aware of hunger. He had had no food for more than fifteen hours. There was a little breeding left in him under the double influence of fear and hunger, but the small relic made him unwilling to thrust himself back as an unwanted guest. That she would accept him with an uninterested acquiescence deterred him. If she would only meet him again with resistance, he would be happy to seize shelter by force. He knew how easily he could work himself into a righteous anger and forget himself. It’s this damned Christianity, he thought, or else not enough of it. He would welcome her as an enemy, or as a friend who would pity him and understand his fear. It was her cold neutrality he hated.
    With unexpected resolution he turned his back on the way he had come that morning and half ran as it were into an obscure future. The more he thought of the girl the more he hated her and pitied himself. If I had been a cat, he considered, she’d have given me something to eat. That he had not been offered food was the idea that now grated on his mind. The thought of her became so hateful, such an incarnation of inhuman indifference, that he