A wave of pity for Davie swept through her body, a froth of motion flowing from her sides and spreading through her chest, pulling back at her throat, a wave running out upon the air.

‘If Davie was here he’d be sixteen now.’

‘Well I do know!’

The woman was gone now and the talk was over, and Ellen watched her receding, a large woman, her long skirt kicking out in little points at the hem as she walked. Ellen lay on the ground near the laneside under a thorn tree but there was no coolness in the grass, which was hot like her own tingling skin, and the heat rolled down in waves from the sun. She heard something crying far off, some undetermined crying, sharp and full of pain, but too far away to touch pity, the mere outline of a cry duplicated without feeling on the hot air. Then her closed eyes began to see people walking quickly up stone steps, some of them turning out of a paved way with little skipping motions, and the scene tilted, wavered and grew dim and then came back larger and clearer in colour before it went into nothingness. Then out of nothing she came into a quick and complete knowledge of the end. You breathe and breathe, on and on, and then you do not breathe any more. For you forever. Forever. It goes out, everything goes, and you are nothing. The world is all there, on and on, but you are not there, you, Ellen. The world goes on, goes on without you. Ellen Chesser. Ellen. Not somebody heard about and said with your mouth but you yourself, dead. It will be. You cannot help it.

She rose to a sitting position with a cry and sat looking out upon the thorn tree and the hot wilted weeds of the lane where crickets clicked as they passed about. This was the world and she was in it, glad with a great rush of passion. Her hand reached out and touched a plantain leaf and her eyes recognised the dog-fennel and the wire fence beyond the dust of the road. She was still there and everything was secure, her body rising tall above the narrow dock and the dandelions. The sky came down behind the locust trees, in place, and everything was real, reaching up and outward, blue where it should be blue, grey haze, heat rising out of the dust, limp dock leaves falling away toward the dusty grass. She walked back to the cabin, moving slowly to feel the security of the path, touching a tree with her fingers, trailing her hand along the stone of the doorstep.