Her hand was pulling at his arm. There in the field over the hedge a
buzzard hawk was dropping like a stone.

"Oh, Mark! Oh! Oh! It's got it!"

She was covering her face with both her hands, and the hawk, with a
young rabbit in its claws, was sailing up again. It looked so beautiful
that he did not somehow feel sorry for the rabbit; but he wanted to
stroke and comfort her, and said:

"It's all right, Sylvia; it really is. The rabbit's dead already, you
know. And it's quite natural."

She took her hands away from a face that looked just as if she were
going to cry.

"Poor little rabbit! It was such a little one!"


XII


On the afternoon of the day following he sat in the smoking-room with
a prayer book in his hand, and a frown on his forehead, reading the
Marriage Service. The book had been effectively designed for not
spoiling the figure when carried in a pocket. But this did not matter,
for even if he could have read the words, he would not have known what
they meant, seeing that he was thinking how he could make a certain
petition to a certain person sitting just behind at a large bureau with
a sliding top, examining artificial flies.