He had gone to his own room and stood for a moment fighting his tears; then he had got back into the car and gone to meet his mother, who never, in all the years he could remember, had ever walked farther than from her own garden door to the church.

When they drew up before the Rectory door, his mother had said:

‘Sit still for a moment. Don’t speak.’ She herself sat, silent and rigid, staring straight out through the windscreen. He sat and thought about life without Isabel, and realized with full force, for the first time, that he had given to his sister all the love he had to bestow on any woman. His bereavement was absolute.

Presently his mother sighed, and stirred. They went into the house. Mrs Rigby, pale and exhausted, was coming down the stairs.

‘She’s all right now, ma’am. I’m going into the kitchen to fetch her a little broth.’

The doctor, naturally, had denied the miracle; rather would he accuse himself of a too hasty verdict. The Reverend Thorby had also held staunchly that it was all rubbish; it was, in fact, through the medium of his jibing tongue that whisper of the affair had ever reached the outside world. Mrs Thorby spoke of the matter only once – to Harold’s knowledge – and that was some years after, just before her own death.

She said, ‘You must be tolerant, Harold. The world is older than Christianity. Look after Isabel, but don’t interfere.’

Well, he had been tolerant, and he had never interfered. There had been times when the strain of his ambivalent position had almost broken him, but even the strain had eased with the years; he could tell himself that Hinduism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism and Christianity could be coexistent; that no creed had the monopoly of virtue. About the details of Isabel’s cult he was deliberately ignorant. It was never discussed, and in his own mind it was sealed away, a Bluebeard’s chamber about which he was not even curious. His main concern was to keep it secret. It was little Miss Mayfield – deliberately chosen for her harmlessness – who had opened the door and compelled him to look within, and his immediate reaction had been not horror, but dread lest anyone else should catch a glimpse. His village was very dear to him; its care and embellishment, the well-being of its inhabitants represented his unconscious attempt to atone. But above fear of scandal for Walwyk ranked fear for Isabel’s good name. On the evening of the day after Wesley Baines’s death, he had gone to Isabel and said: