They found themselves, by a lucky chance, in a wheat-field that had been cut but not yet carried; and after a step or two across the stubble, they sank down with a mutual cry of satisfaction against the side of a shock of corn.

The weight of the immense vaporous summer darkness covered them there like a waveless ocean. They floated there upon a cool, yielding darkness that had neither substance nor shape, a darkness full of a faint fragrance that was the sweetness neither of clover nor of poppies nor of corn nor of grass, but was rather the breath of the great terrestrial orb itself, a dark, interior, outflowing sweetness between vast-rocking waves of air, where firmament bent down to firmament, and space rose up to meet space.

He kept fast hold of her hand; and her fingers seemed still cold and stiff and impassive, just as they had done when he first took them in the road. She did not bend her head towards him as they sat side by side, nor did he make the least movement to put his arm round her.