How still the farm was, except for the movements of the cows inside the shippen at his back, or of the horses in the stable!  Rachel, no doubt, was now asleep.  In the old days he had often—­enviously—­watched her tumble asleep as soon as her bright head was on the pillow; while in his own case sleep had been for years a difficult business.

Somebody else would watch her sleeping now.

Yes, if he, the outcast, allowed it.  And again the frenzied sense of power swept through him. If he allowed it!  It rested with him.

The following day, Ellesborough set out in the early afternoon for Great End Farm, the bearer of much news.

The day was dark and rainy, with almost a gale blowing, but his spirits had never been higher.  The exultation of the great victory, the incredible Victory, seemed to breathe upon him from the gusty wind, to be driving the westerly clouds, and crying in all the noises of the woods.  Was it really over?—­over and done?—­the agony of these four years—­the hourly sacrifice of irreplaceable life—­the racking doubt as to the end—­the torturing question in every conscious mind—­“Is there a God in Heaven—­a God who cares for men—­or is there not?”

He could have shouted the answer aloud—­“There is—­there is a God!  And He is just.”

Faith was natural to him, and nourished on his new happiness no less than on the marvellous issue of the war, it set his heart singing on this dull winter’s day.  How should he find her?  Threshing, perhaps, in the big barn, and he would turn to, and work with her and the girls till work was done, and they could have the sitting-room to themselves, and he could tell her all his news.  Janet—­the ever-kind and thoughtful Janet—­would see to that.  The more he saw of the farm-life the more he admired Janet.  She was a little slow.  She was not clever; and she had plenty of small prejudices which amused him.  But she was the salt of the earth.  Trust her—­lean upon her—­she would never let you down.  And now he was going to trust his beloved to her—­for a while.

Yes—­Rachel and the girls, they were all in the high barn, feeding the greedy maw of the threshing machine; a business which strained muscles and backs, and choked noses and throats with infinitesimal particles of oil and the fine flying chaff.  He watched Rachel a few minutes as she lifted and pitched—­a typical figure of a New Labour, which is also a New Beauty, on this old earth.  Then he drew her away, flung off his tunic, and took her place, while she, smiling and panting, her hands on her sides, leaned against the wall, and watched in her turn.

Then when the engine stopped, and the great hopper full of grain lay ready for the miller, they found themselves alone in the barn for a minute.  The girls and Janet had gone to milk, and Hastings with them.  There was a lantern in the barn, which showed Rachel in the swirl of the corn dust with which the barn was full, haloed and golden with it, like a Homeric goddess in a luminous cloud.  Her soft brown head, her smile, showing the glint of her white teeth, her eyes, and all the beauty of her young form, in its semi-male dress—­they set his blood on fire.  Just as he was, in his khaki shirt-sleeves, he came to her, and took her in his arms.  She clung to him passionately.