XI
They decided to find their way through the lanes to Alum Bay, and then, keeping the Cross in sight, to return over the downs, with the moon-path broad on the water before them. For the moon was rising late. Twilight, however, rose more rapidly than they had anticipated. The lane twisted among meadows and wild lands and copses—a wilful little lane, quite incomprehensible. So they lost their distant landmark, the white cross.
Darkness filtered through the daylight. When at last they came to a signpost, it was almost too dark to read it. The fingers seemed to withdraw into the dusk the more they looked.
“We must go to the left,” said Helena.
To the left rose the downs, smooth and grey near at hand, but higher black with gorse, like a giant lying asleep with a bearskin over his shoulders.
Several pale chalk-tracks ran side by side through the turf. Climbing, they came to a disused chalk-pit, which they circumvented. Having passed a lonely farmhouse, they mounted the side of the open down, where was a sense of space and freedom.
“We can steer by the night,” said Siegmund, as they trod upwards pathlessly. Helena did not mind whither they steered. All places in that large fair
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