The shadow on his spirit blackened swiftly; he suspected something quite suddenly and savagely. Hunter, in Crane’s old phrase, was not a man who let the grass grow under his feet. It was so like him to have somehow used the incident as an introduction to the Seymours. Things were always stepping-stones for Hunter, and the little rock in the river had been a stepping-stone to the country house. But was the country house a stepping-stone to something else? Suddenly Hood realized that all his angers had been very abstract angers. He had never hated a man before.
At that moment the train stopped at the station of Cowford.
“I wish you’d get out here with me,� he said abruptly, “only for a little—and it might be the last time. I want you to do something.�
She looked at him with a curious expression and said in a rather low voice, “What do you want me to do?�
“I want you to come and pick bluebells,� he said harshly.
She stepped out of the train, and they went up a winding country road without a word.
“I remember!� she said suddenly. “When you get to the top of this hill you see the wood where the bluebells were, and your little island beyond.�
“Come on and see it,� said Owen.
They stepped on the crest of the hill and stood. Below them the black factory belched its livid smoke into the air; and where the wood had been were rows of little houses like boxes, built of dirty yellow brick.
Hood spoke. “And when you shall see the abomination of desolation sitting in the Holy of Holies—isn’t that when the world is supposed to end? I wish the world would end now; with you and me standing on a hill.�