"I don't know, dear. I will try and think to-morrow."
"I won't tease you, but there is so much I want to know. Poor great big old grand-daddy-man, you look quite dead."
He shuffled towards her, put his arms round her, and began to make noises as if he was in pain. "I am tired and weak. That is all, darling, and the rabbit in the trap made me sick. I am weak and old and very tired, and I know I have done no good in my life. Shut it out, my maid—shut it out."
It was the prospect which he wanted shut out. They could see the bare stretch of moor, upon it the moon shining, and over it the wind rushing. There is nothing more dreary than a windy moonlit night upon the moor, filled with its own emptiness of sound, suggestive of wild motion and yet motionless, covered with light that is not light.
"It is like a lonely life," said Weevil bitterly.
Boodles dropped the curtains and tried to laugh. She did not like the look on the old man's face.
"The lonely life has gone," she said. "Now we will have some light."
Weevil shuffled after her, muttering to himself: "You have done it, Abel-Cain. You must keep it up. You must hold the Brute off her somehow, or she may have to go out, into the windy moonlight, into the lonely life."