They sat down and began rubbing their legs to restore circulation, impaired by so many days of flying. Before them stretched a vast undulating landscape of tillage, punctuated by lines of cypresses. The air was clear as crystal; every detail was distinct and in perfect perspective: it was as though they were looking at an enormous chessboard. Bands of women were at work in the fields. They moved slowly and sang in mournful voices. Here and there plumes of bluish smoke rose from heaps of smouldering trash or low-roofed dwellings. In the middle distance the roofs gathered together into a little town. Water was led through the fields in chessboard channels, with willows and mulberries growing alongside. The clank of a wind pump came at long intervals. Here was the serenity, the benign serenity, Moor had promised them in his first talk on the triangle, a serenity which had evaded them till now. The sun touched the horizon and a distant yelling broke the silence. The air was so clear that they could see the minute shape of a man gesticulating from the top of a slender tower. A prisoner, they supposed, calling for help. The women working in the fields paid no attention and presently he gave up. Dusk gathered, the noises of dusk arose: croaking frogs, cicadas, nightingales, then an owl. It was too dark to unpack. They pillowed their heads on their portmanteaux and fell asleep. Sunrise woke them. The prisoner on the tower was renewing his yells, poor creature! When they had heard him yelling for several days, always at the same pitch and always at the rise and set of sun, they concluded he was clockwork.

It was the garden gate of her parents’ home and led into their kitchen garden—an unintimidating entrance, Nel judged. Even so, he opened it uneasily: he suspected she was not all she seemed—or was more. A carrot fell on him from above. It had slipped from the apron of a fairy flying briskly overhead. He had decided on a prudent departure when he saw her running toward him, shameless and glorious, with her finger on her lips. A little later, her uncle, who was eating gooseberries at the farther end of the garden, heard a sharp cry of delight, thought he recognized Nel’s voice, looked round, and saw her heels in the air. Remembering the joys of his youth, he began to sing a villanelle. A gardener burst through a line of French beans, and attacked the young man with a hoe, shouting, ‘Get out, you dirty marauding mortal, you!’ The young man fled. But it was too late. Nel became pregnant.