of ages into them. I tell you if you looked at them long you’d go mad. If it is easy for you to forget the God-damned mess and mystery of all this it isn’t for me.” He flung her hands away and stamped off to the stable.
Valerie bit her lips and looked up at the impotent stars so brilliant in the clear May night that they silvered the river running below. For the first time in her life she had not the faintest idea what she was going to say next, what she could say next to comfort this man. It was all very well for her to feel deep within herself that the only answer to him was to antidote tragedy with beauty, death with life. How was she to say it and not be cheap and banal? She was feeling strained and uncertain when Dane led the horses out.
“I’m sorry I was rude, Miss Carr,” he said, as he stopped before her.
She had a wild impulse to throw her arms about him as he stood with his head a little on one side looking at her.
“You were not rude,” she said softly.
She let him help her to mount, and she put her hand on his shoulder with a significant pressure. They rode in silence out of the hospital grounds and along the road by the river. She stole looks at him as he kept his horse abreast of hers. He had a tweed cap tilted back on his head that gave him a curiously rakish look as it pressed his hair out round his white face. She wondered why he wanted her company for he did not seem aware of her at all. But she had no desire to clutch at his reserves. She looked up at the stars and tried to think her own thoughts.
About a mile from the hospital he pulled up his horse. He looked up a scrub-covered slope to their left. He seemed to find something.
“Are you in a hurry?” he asked.
“No.”
