Her own room was austere and white. An indefinable coolness haunted its empty corners and clear spaces. There were no photographs, as she had not yet unpacked the photographs of her girl friends which usually adorned the mantelpiece. There were only three pictures—a Memling Madonna, Holbein's Portrait of a Young Woman, and Watts' Sir Galahad, beloved of schoolgirls.
Tony sat down on the bed and began to unplait her hair.
"What a fool Awdrey is," she murmured to herself, "always thinking of love, and all that rot."
CHAPTER III IN THE RAIN
From Nigel's bed as well as Janey's one could see woods, and in summer he had often lain listening to the night-jar in them—that mysterious whirring, dull and restless, as if ghosts were spinning.
That night all was windless silence, and there was no motion in the dark patch of window-view, except the flashing of the stars. Towards morning a delicious sense of cold stole over Nigel's sleep. Soft airs seemed to be baffing him, rippling round him, and there seemed to be water—water and wind. Then suddenly a bell rang in his brain. The dream collapsed, pulverised. He sprang up in bed, then scrambled out—then opened his eyes, to see himself still surrounded by his dream.
It was five o'clock, and the Parkhurst bell had rung in his head just as it had rung at that hour for hundreds of mornings. But he was not at Parkhurst, he was still in his dream—water and wind. Against the horizon stretched a long dim line of woods, and above them the sky was lucent with the first hope of dawn. Into the fields splashed a gentle rain, and in at his window blew the west wind, soft, damp and cold.
For the first time Nigel realised that he was home, and that he was free.