It was in the first weeks of spring that she made up her mind to kill the old woman upstairs. She was twenty years old. There was so much that she wanted. She wanted a man of her own and a black dress for Sundays and a hat with a flower. She had no money at all. On the days that the boy took the eggs and the vegetables to market she gave him sixpence that the old woman gave her, and the money the boy brought back in his handkerchief she put into the old woman’s hand. She worked for her food and shelter as the boy worked for his, though she slept in a room upstairs and he slept in a straw bed over the empty sheds.

On a market morning she walked into the garden so that the plan might be cooled in her head. It was a fine May day with no more than two clouds in the sky, two unshapely hands closing round the head of the sun. “If I could fly,” she thought, “I could fly in at the open window and fix my teeth in her throat.” But the cool wind blew the thought away. She knew that she was no common girl, for she had read books in the winter evenings when the boy was dreaming in the straw and the old woman was alone in the dark. She had read of a god who came down like money, of snakes with the voices of men, and of a man who stood on the top of a hill talking with a piece of fire.

At the end of the garden where the fence kept out the wild, green fields she came to a mound of earth. There she had buried the dog she had killed for catching and killing the hens. On a rough cross the date of the death was written backwards so that the dog had not died yet. “I could bury her here,” said Helen to herself, “by the side of the grave, so that nobody could find her.” And she patted her hands and reached the back door of the cottage before the two clouds got round the sun.