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the woods were a favourite walk of hers; her favourite walk took her in the opposite direction, up past The Crofts to the hilltop; but she knew that Mr. Gales was at work in the dining-room and did not care to risk encounters. She foresaw, indeed, that she would now seldom walk past The Crofts. Clive would be in town, Robin at his little local Montessori school; if Hester saw her from the house or garden, she would feel constrained to greet her, and one of the conversations that Hester seemed to find easy but that Monica felt laborious, would ensue; so the dull woods would be her frequent portion.

They were singularly dull woods, she thought, as she approached them this afternoon, drawn in duns and russets on a linen-grey sky. It was a windless, heavy day, and when she stepped in among the closely serried ashes and alders—all untended and unthinned so that they grew poorly, the dense under-brush rising about them—she was aware of a slight feeling of stupefaction, as if she entered a dream. The woods were crossed by sluggish streams—or, rather, ditches—choked with the fallen leaves of a rainy summer, and in passing over each one, on its narrow plank, she felt as if she sank still further into the dream and left each time more of the