I opened the door and we went downstairs into the garden. It was the middle of the night; what there was of the moon was almost wholly obscured; the air was mild with the purity of recent rain. Up and down the wet lawns we walked, bareheaded and in our slippered feet.
Suddenly lights flashed upon us out of the shrubbery.
"It is all right," I called. "Do not disturb us. Go into another part of the grounds."
The voice seemed unlike my own, but the watchers obeyed it.
Nature exhorted us as we walked in the garden. Her purity, her calm, the incommunicable magic of her spaciousness, the thrall of her splendour entered our veins. We were her children, flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone. The mighty Mother spoke to us.
A little wind moved softly among the gaunt branches of a pine.
"I must make quite sure that the Voice has spoken to me," said Fitz.
The unhappy man walked to the pine-tree, knelt down and seemed involuntarily to shroud his face with his hands.
I shrank back and turned away.
Quite suddenly my heart leapt with surprise and dismay. An unexpected and sinister presence was by my side.