He stumbled across the kitchen to her and she lifted her hands to her shoulders. ‘What will you do for me?’ she said, and loosened the straps of her frock so that it fell about her and left her breast bare. She took his hand and placed it on her flesh. He stared at her nakedness, then said her name and caught hold of her. She held him close. ‘What will you do for me?’ She let her frock fall on the floor and tore the rest of her clothes away. ‘You will do what I want,’ she said as his hands dropped on her.

After a minute she struggled out of his arms and ran softly across the room. With her naked back to the door that led upstairs, she beckoned him and told him what he was to do. ‘You help me, we shall be rich,’ she said. He smiled and nodded. He tried to finger her again but she caught his fingers and opened the door and led him upstairs. ‘You stay here quiet,’ she said. In the old woman’s room she looked around her as if for the last time, at the cracked jug, the half-open window, the bed and the text on the wall. ‘One o’clock now,’ she said into the old woman’s ear, and the blind eyes smiled. Helen put her fingers round the old woman’s throat. ‘One o’clock now,’ she said, and with a sudden movement knocked the old woman’s head against the wall. It needed but three little knocks, and the head burst like an egg.

‘What have you done?’ cried the boy. Helen called for him to come in. He stared at the naked woman who cleaned her hands on the bed and at the blood that made a round, red stain on the wall, and screamed out in horror. ‘Be quiet,’ said Helen, but he screamed again at her quiet voice and scurried downstairs.

‘So Helen must fly,’ she said to herself. ‘Fly out of the old woman’s room.’ She opened the window wider and stepped out. ‘I am flying,’ she said.

But she was not flying.

The Enemies

It was morning in the green acres of the Jarvis valley, and Mr Owen was picking the weeds from the edges of his garden path. A great wind pulled at his beard, the vegetable world roared under his feet. A rook had lost itself in the sky, and was making a noise to its mate; but the mate never came, and the rook flew into the west with a woe in its beak. Mr Owen, who had stood up to ease his shoulders and look at the sky, observed how dark the wings beat against the red sun. In her draughty kitchen Mrs Owen grieved over the soup. Once, in past days, the valley had housed the cattle alone; the farm-boys came down from the hills to holla at the cattle and to drive them to be milked; but no stranger set foot in the valley. Mr Owen, walking lonely through the country, had come upon it at the end of a late summer evening when the cattle were lying down still, and the stream that divided it was speaking over the pebbles. Here, thought Mr Owen, I will build a small house with one storey, in the middle of the valley, set around by a garden. And, remembering clearly the way he had come along the winding hills, he returned to his village and the questions of Mrs Owen.