'Stay here,' said he, 'while I look for a way through. I am afraid you
will be tired.' She stood alone by the walls of gorse. The lights that had flickered
into being during the dusk grew stronger, so that a little farmhouse
down the hill glowed with great importance on the night, while the
far-off in visible sea became like a roadway, large and mysterious, its
specks of light moving slowly, and its bigger lamps stationed out amid
the darkness. Helena wanted the day-wanness to be quite wiped off the
west. She asked for the full black night, that would obliterate
everything save Siegmund. Siegmund it was that the whole world meant.
The darkness, the gorse, the downs, the specks of light, seemed only to
bespeak him. She waited for him to come back. She could hardly endure
the condition of intense waiting.

He came, in his grey clothes almost invisible. But she felt him coming.

'No good,' he said, 'no vestige of a path. Not a rabbit-run.' 'Then we will sit down awhile,' said she calmly.

'"Here on this mole-hill,"' he quoted mockingly.

They sat down in a small gap in the gorse, where the turf was very soft,
and where the darkness seemed deeper. The night was all fragrance, cool
odour of darkness, keen, savoury scent of the downs, touched with
honeysuckle and gorse and bracken scent.