A little ripple went over them, and she braced herself, but otherwise they did not move.

She was strong and they were old. How would old Carlo react to a kick on the ankle, her teeth in his wrist. The candle might be used as a weapon.

She got down into the hall. They were a wall in front of her, between her and all the doors.

She moved towards the drawing room and walked right at them.

She thought of striking them, the matchstick sounds of the breakage of old bones. She would do it if she had to—

Eric and Stephan stepped aside. They let her pass.

She went into the unlighted room, the candle bursting on the ridges of furniture. The door to the conservatory veered at her, half-open as it always was by night.

They were coming after, creeping forward with a susurrus of materials and soft shoes. Creeping after her as if they stalked her. But would they spring?

She pushed wide the door and edged through the lanes between the great plants, black and white and grey. They brushed her like strengthless and accusing hands. Rachaela thrust them off, and the stems broke, the petals showered like confetti.

She gained the door on to the night and pushed it and stepped over the sill.

She walked across the garden, over Carlo’s weeded lawn, under the girders of the cedar. Only the little gate now.

She put down the candle and left it burning there. She glanced back as she shut the gate behind her.

All the Scarabae—all but one—were crowded in the garden. They watched her. Their grim old faces gave away nothing. Like elderly kiddies at a play they did not understand yet knew to be important, they regarded her as she stood behind the gate.

Goodbye, she thought. Goodbye for ever.

With a feeling of great cold, almost of terror, she turned away from them, brushing a spray of their petals from her coat. Who would believe this flight by night. She thought of all their eyes glittering in the candleshine. Eyes like beetles caught on the bushes. She resisted the temptation to look back a second time.

Rachaela walked along the path, in among the pine trees with the sullen roar of the sea to her right. When the trees broke, she came out on the uncut lawn of the heath.-The sea lashed between the bulkheads of the cliff. The standing stone rose white in the darkness. There was a thin moon, a wrack of cloud. The night was noisy with its own nocturnal sounds.

Now she must remember the way that Cheta and Carlo took. She needed to find the village in the dark.

She moved along the heath, and from a tuft of darkness something came out and stood in her way.

Last of them all, it was the cat.