Out in the night they were searching for a madman. He had green eyes, they said, and had married a lady. They said he had cut off her lips because she smiled at men. They took him away, but he stole a knife from the kitchen and slashed his keeper and broke out into the wild valleys.

From afar he saw the light in the house, and stumbled up to the edge of the garden. He felt, he did not see, the little fence around it. The rusting wire scraped on his hands, and the wet, abominable grass crept over his knees. And once he was through the fence, the hosts of the garden came rushing to meet him, the flower-headed, and the bodying frosts. He had torn his fingers while the old wounds were still wet. Like a man of blood he came out of the enemy darkness onto the steps. He said in a whisper, Let them not shoot me. And he opened the door.

She was in the middle of the room. Her hair had fallen untidily, and three of the buttons at the neck of her dress were undone. What made the dog howl as it did? Frightened of the howling, and thinking of the tales she had heard, she rocked in her chair. What became of the woman? she wondered as she rocked. She could not think of a woman without any lips. What became of women without any lips? she wondered.

The door made no noise. He stepped into the room, trying to smile, and holding out his hands.

Oh, you’ve come back, she said.

Then she turned in her chair and saw him. There was blood even by his green eyes. She put her fingers to her mouth. Not shoot, he said.

But the moving of her arm drew the neck of her dress apart, and he stared in wonder at her wide, white forehead, her frightened eyes and mouth, and down onto the flowers on her dress. With the moving of her arm, her dress danced in the light. She sat before him, covered in flowers. Sleep, said the madman. And, kneeling down, he put his bewildered head upon her lap.

THE VEST

He rang the bell. There was no answer. She was out. He turned the key.

The hall in the late afternoon light was full of shadows. They made one almost solid shape. He took off his hat and coat, looking sidewise, so that he might not see the shape, at the light through the sitting-room door.

“Is anybody in?”

The shadows bewildered him. She would have swept them up as she swept the invading dust.