‘But it all comes back to this one thought, that one must.’

Who said that? It does not seem to matter which of them it was. There is no return. They are as one in the struggle against the glittering tyrant. While they sit here in the clergyman’s narrow study they are listening all the time: a habit brought about by the storm and darkness. The cracking is inside them. Something is grieving. Something is saying: Listen! There it is again. Stand firm. Hold out till it’s over.

A breathless moment when this passes through them. They look at one another as they might if something were about to tilt over, not quite knowing which way it will go.

A breathless moment. The house is cracking, and they are the house and feel this tormenting disintegration within themselves. A glimpse. Of what? We are together – thousands of servants in this house – and yet we are as one. So that it is we who are the house in the dark. It is cracking. They feel it as strain on the heart muscles. We have it within us. We are the house, and the darkness seething up from the centre seems to be in us as well. Thus the valley of the shadow is deepened. The centre with all its horror is within them, overflowing and spreading itself about them. Help me, they think, floundering in the seething darkness full of the glittering, bewitched arrows. Help me so that the house may stand. Everyone is alone. The blind panes stare as if into vacancy. Everyone is on his own, and is the house, and yet we thousands are as one. They are deep in the valley, praying desperately that the green pastures they have sometimes glimpsed in revelation may appear to them again and support them, so that the avalanche may not fall. Come, wondrous power that causes man to raise himself up!

Here they sit, these two, among thousands of others in the same moment of time – for the house is infinitely large – sharing their hour of need. They hear the sounds of collapse and see the centre opening in all its horror. They seek each other’s eyes as shadows flit past, hold out till it’s over. Then it glides away again. The terrible moment of weakness is truly over. They blink dazedly at one another. The tension and the darkness and the light were all within themselves. There was no house other than themselves on this enclosed, blind plateau.

The man with the austere face says at last, ‘It will be no use to them.’

‘What won’t?’

‘We shall be the stronger.’

Stig nods. The other continues: ‘We’ll get the better of them. Any other solution is impossible. Our enemies will be confounded one day, as such enemies always must.’

Stig does not answer. He hears these same words repeated continually wherever he goes. He has heard them thousands of times, so that they have become mere sounds to him. He can no longer be bothered to respond. They certainly need to be said, but he is so sick and tired of standing continually tensed against the tyrant that this loose assertion evokes no response from him. ‘Let’s talk about something else,’ he says. ‘Enough has been said about that. I’ve become so tired of it.’