Macfarlane was puzzled. She was still staring at him.

‘I thought you did . . . You should do. You look as though you’d got it, too . . .’

‘Got what?’

‘The gift—curse—call it what you like. I believe you have. Look hard at that hollow in the rocks. Don’t think of anything, just look . . . Ah!’ she marked his slight start. ‘Well—you saw something?’

‘It must have been imagination. Just for a second I saw it full of blood!’

She nodded. ‘I knew you had it. That’s the place where the old sun-worshippers sacrificed victims. I knew that before anyone told me. And there are times when I know just how they felt about it—almost as though I’d been there myself . . . And there’s something about the moor that makes me feel as though I were coming back home . . . Of course it’s natural that I should have the gift. I’m a Ferguesson. There’s second sight in the family. And my mother was a medium until my father married her. Cristine was her name. She was rather celebrated.’

‘Do you mean by “the gift” the power of being able to see things before they happen?’

‘Yes, forwards or backwards—it’s all the same. For instance, I saw you wondering why I married Maurice—oh! yes, you did!—It’s simply because I’ve always known that there’s something dreadful hanging over him . . . I wanted to save him from it . . . Women are like that. With my gift, I ought to be able to prevent it happening . . . if one ever can . . . I couldn’t help Dickie. And Dickie wouldn’t understand . . . He was afraid. He was very young.’

‘Twenty-two.’

‘And I’m thirty. But I didn’t mean that. There are so many ways of being divided, length and height and breadth . . . but to be divided by time is the worst way of all . . .’ She fell into a long brooding silence.

The low peal of a gong from the house below roused them.

At lunch, Macfarlane watched Maurice Haworth. He was undoubtedly madly in love with his wife. There was the unquestioning happy fondness of a dog in his eyes. Macfarlane marked also the tenderness of her response, with its hint of maternity. After lunch he took his leave.

‘I’m staying down at the inn for a day or so. May I come and see you again? Tomorrow, perhaps?’

‘Of course. But—’

‘But what—’

She brushed her hand quickly across her eyes. ‘I don’t know. I—I fancied that we shouldn’t meet again—that’s all . . . Goodbye.’

He went down the road slowly. In spite of himself, a cold hand seemed tightening round his heart. Nothing in her words, of course, but—

A motor swept round the corner. He flattened himself against the hedge . . . only just in time. A curious greyish pallor crept across his face . . .