weeds. Few used it. The visits from those at the house had become rarer, either because of the heat and lassitude of the month of July or because they were absorbed by some new interweaving of the threads of the pattern that was being woven at Jalna. Eden and Alayne were left very much to themselves, spending drowsy days, cut off by his illness and her shrinking from meetings with the family.
She felt apathetic now. They might go on like this for ever, passing their days in that green shade, their nights in fantastic dreams. She was startled, almost afraid, when, on this morning, she saw Renny's figure detach itself from the mist which lay thick under the orchard trees, and which had made his body appear to be but another trunk, and emerge into the path. She saw that he wore a loose white shirt and riding breeches, but he carried in one hand some implement and in the other a long trailing piece of vetch, covered with little purple flowers.
He moved with such energy along the path, seemed so unoppressed by the humid air and the fog, that she fancied it moved aside for him, was lightened and dispersed at his approach.
Eden had actually been trying to write. He raised his eyes from the pad that lay on his knee and, like Alayne, looked almost startled toward the door, as Renny stood there.
An expression of embarrassment made the elder brother's features appear less carved than usual. He knew that he had been remiss, even heartless, but he had, since their return, a feeling of shy avoidance toward them. Although Alayne had come only to nurse Eden, to win him back to health, and then again part from him, she seemed now to belong to him. She must not be sought out, brooded on, hungered for, with a pain as for something one could never possess. Renny had retired, with an almost animal fatalism, to wait for events to turn out as they would. He was watchful. His instincts were invincible. He was conscious of the presence of those two in the very air he breathed, in the earth beneath his
