—go away. I've told Piers about you. I heard you in the birch wood, and I ran back, and told Piers—"
Eden held the still flaring match near Finch's face, as though it were some supernatural ray by which he could look into his very soul.
"Yes?" he said, steadily. "Go on."
"He's after you. He—he looked terrible. You'd better go away."
Pheasant made a little moaning sound like a rabbit caught in a trap. Eden dropped the match.
"What a worm you are, brother Finch!" he said. "I don't know where we Whiteoaks ever got you." He turned to Pheasant. "Don't be frightened, darling. I will take care of you."
"Oh, oh!" she cried. "What shall we do?"
"Hush."
Finch said: "He'll be back any minute," and turned away.
He could not go into that house with its peacefully shining lights, where the others were still talking perhaps of the picnic, all unwitting of the thunderbolt that hung over them. He skulked around the house, through the kitchen garden, through the orchard, and out on the road that led to the churchyard.
The church steeple, rising from among the tapering cedars, pointed more sharply than they toward the sky. The church had gathered to itself the darkest shadows of tree and tomb, and drawn them like a cloak about its walls. The dead, lying beneath the dewy young grass, seemed to Finch to be watching him, as he climbed the steep steps from the road, out of hollow eye sockets in which no longer was boldness, or terror, or lust, but only resigned decay. They no longer were afraid of God. All was over. They had nothing to do but lie there till their bones were light as the pollen of a flower.
