She was conscious of the fabric of her body as never before.  She felt her heart beating as a thing heavier and more powerful than the rest of her frame; she was aware of the breath passing through the delicate skin of her nostrils, of a faint, sweet aching in her thighs, of the tenderness of her breast crushed against the rock, of the acuteness of life beating in her outspread finger-tips against the rough granite and in her toes pressed against the turf.  She dropped to the ground and, rolling over, stretched to utmost tension, then relaxed to limpness, eyelids closed and the hair blowing upon them the only moving thing about her.  Then she scrambled to her feet again and set off towards Cloom.

As she neared it she saw on the far slope a plough at work, looking like a tiny toy, the horses a rich bright brown in the sunlight.  Her strong young eyes could see the darker blown mesh of their manes and the long hair about their fetlocks; she could see, too, that the man in a faded blue shirt and earth-coloured trousers driving them was John-James, for even at that distance his sturdy build and the copper red of his broad neck were unmistakable.  She saw that the man standing talking by the gate was Ishmael, and she stayed still, wondering if he would see and recognise her.  The tiny figure turned, stood staring, and then waved its hat above its head; Georgie fluttered her handkerchief and turned off down towards the stream at the bottom of the moor while Ishmael was still watching.

It was warmer down by the stream than on the crest above, and the air was as though filled with a bright sparkle with the refractions of the sun from ripple and eddy.  The stream was a mere thread of water, but broken by stone and drooping bough to the semblance of urgency, and with its mazy lights went a clear murmur of sound.  Georgie took off her little cloth jacket and threw herself down on the grassy slope that, amidst a tangle of hemlock, edged the purling water.  Between her and the sunlight drooped an alder; she saw against the sun the showers of yellow catkins all gleaming transparent, like sunlit raindrops caught at the moment when they lengthen....  She lay under the glory of this Danaean shower and half-closed her eyes to stare up at the wonder of it.  Presently she heard the sound of twigs and leaves being crushed under advancing feet, but she did not look up, only started to hum a little tune, though she could not hear it for the rising beat of her own heart in her ears.

When Ishmael merely dropped down beside her and, asking if he might smoke, proceeded to light his pipe, she calmed a trifle—­a sick dread that she dismissed as impossible flashed through her; she peeped at him from her tilted hat brim, and saw his hands were trembling slightly as he struck the match.  In a moment she had caught back her own poise; she watched sidelong, noting with an odd precision exactly how he looked, how his brown skin glistened a little in the sun, so