'Don't Hazel!' he said.
He felt quite frightened when he remembered how he had behaved. A strange doubt of himself, born that night, stirred again. Was he all he had thought? Was the world what he had thought? Misgivings seized him. Perhaps he ought not to have brought Hazel here or to the Spinney. An older code than those of Church and State began to flame before him, condemning him.
Suddenly he wanted reassurance. 'You did want to come, didn't you? I didn't take advantage of you very much, did I?' he asked. 'You want to stay?'
'No, I didna want to come till you made me. You got the better of me.
But maybe you couldna help it. Maybe you were druv to it.'
'Who by?' he asked, with an attempt at flippancy.
Hazel's eyes were dark and haunted.
'Summat strong and drodsome, as drives us all,' she said.
She had a vision of all the world racing madly round and round, like the exhausted and terrified horse Reddin had that morning lunged. But what power it was that stood in the centre, breaking without an effort the spirit of the mad, fleeing, tethered creature, she could not tell.
Reddin sat brooding until Hazel, recovering first in her mercurial way, said:
'Now I've come, I mun bide. D'you think the old fellow'd let me cook summat for supper? It's been pig-food for us to-day.'