"Yes." Miriam stood up and laughed unsteadily. "How queer I feel! George—"
"It's all right," he said. "I'll take you home."
"But we're not afraid," Helen said. "There's nothing to be afraid of on the moor." All possibility of fear had gone: her dread had been for some uncertain thing that was to come, and now she knew the evil and found in it something almost as still as rest.
In the passage, he separated her from Miriam. "I want to speak to you."
"Yes. Be careful."
"Tonight. In your garden. I'll wait there. Come to me. Promise that, too."
"Oh, yes, yes," she said. "That, too."
He watched them go across the yard, their heads bent towards each other, and Helen's pale arm like a streak on Miriam's dress. He heard their footsteps and the shifting of a horse in the stables, and a mingled smell of manure and early flowers crept up to him. The slim figures were now hardly separable from the wood, and they were frail and young and touching. He looked at them, and he was sorry for all the unworthy things he had ever done. It was Helen who made him feel like that, Helen who shone like a star, very far off, but not quite out of reach. She was the only star that night. Not one showed its face among the clouds, and there was no moon to wrinkle her droll features at the little men on earth. Helen was the star, shining in the larch-wood. He called her name, but she did not hear, and he seemed to be caught up by the sound and to float among the clouds.
"It's like being converted," he told himself, and he followed slowly across the moor.