‘Yes, and back again.’

She sat down on a rock. From here she could see to the house, the standing stone between like a lightning.

No rabbits today.

She began to cry, silently. Some feeling after all then.

The sea boomed.

The heath took no notice of her.

Rain fell for days and nights. It washed away the markers, the clawings of the cat in the earth, the tenuous little flowers beside the path, the webs upon the outside of the windows. It dissolved memory. For this was what the immediate past had become.

He had come in at the door, he had lain down with her, he had been her lover. And before that he had brought her back from the world, home again into the enclave of the Scarabae.

The doors to the tower were locked. She had tried them after two days. She had knocked.

She knew intuitively Babylon had been only for one night. He had wanted her only for one night. If he had even profoundly wanted her at all. It was the act the house drove him to, a completion. Even her blood was not enough to entice him. If it was true, he had gone without, a monk, for thirty years.

She did not want to leave the house now.

In misery she clutched at it. The cheerful fireplaces, the masks of the windows. She could hide here, burrow, and be safe. No worries, no living to earn, no people to deal with. How dangerous the house was, a great stone cradle lagged with cotton-wool to wrap her.

She existed with the firelight and the radio, and most nights she went down to ‘dine’ with Stephan and Anna, and now and then others appeared. She knew them all now.

She had never gone back to the beach.

But the rain washed the beach, too.

They were all there, at the dinner table, all of them but Camillo, who had never come. Sixteen Scarabae, and the four who served.

Wine was brought with the fish.

From this, if she had not guessed, she saw it was a celebration. Her blood turned to ice.

And they all smiled at her from time to time. Little biting smiles of their old strong teeth.

Then she felt the trap again. It was not a cradle she was in.

Upstairs she had another hot bath, too hot, it almost made her sick.

She performed the set of exercises she had taken to, on the carpet by the bed.

She should have drunk more of the wine.

In the bed she lay and imagined that she had never come here, that her life went on, between the shop of Mr Gerard and the flat. There would be monetary compensation for the loss of the fiat. She had heard nothing, but how could she, here?

She waited, for the door to open.

Of course it did not.

Five by the tower clock at the bedside—three-thirty in the morning.