Jerking back, Bennett altered his direction.. He stumbled up the path, breathing hard, and then up the three steps at the end of it which led to the door.
"She's dead," said Bohun.
In the silence they heard roused sparrows shrilling and bickering, and one fluttered across from under the eaves. Bohun's slow-drawn breath turned to smoke in the air; his lips hardly moved. His eyes were fixed with a dull intensity on Bennett's face, and his cheeks looked sunken.
"Do you hear me?" he cried. He lifted a riding-crop and slashed it across the doorpost. "I tell, you Marcia's dead! I've just found her. What's the matter with you? Can't you say something? Dead. Her head-her head is all-"
He looked at sticky fingers, and his shoulders trembled.
"Don't you believe me? Go in and look. My God, the loveliest woman that ever lived, all — all — go and see. They killed her, that's what they did! Somebody killed her. She fought. She would. Dear Marcia. It was no good. She couldn't live. Nothing of mine-ever stays. We were to go riding this morning, before anybody was up. I came out here and…"
Bennett was trying to fight down a physical nausea.
"But," he said, "what's she doing here? In this place, I mean?"
The other looked at him dully. "Oh, no,',' he said at last, as though his vacant mind had found an elusive fact. "You don't know, do you? You weren't there. No. Well, she insisted on sleeping here: all the time she was with us. That was like Marcia. Oh, everything was like Marcia. But why should she want to stay here? I wouldn't have let her. But I wasn't here to stop it… "
"Sir!" called a low, rather hoarse voice from across the clearing. They saw the groom craning his neck and gesticulating. "Sir. Wot is it? Was it you that yelled, sir? I saw you go in, and then-"