Then, as the grass-scented mists grew cooler against his face, rolling up towards the arable lands from the hushed Blackmore meadows, the old serpent of lecherous desire lifted once more its head in that spacious night. Once more his mind reverted to Gerda Torp⁠—not to Gerda as she was when she sent her bird-call so far over Poll’s Camp, but to Gerda as she was to his wicked imagination when he listened to the lewd whisperings of Lobbie Torp and Bob Weevil, to the Gerda he had never seen and perhaps would never see⁠—the Gerda who used a tombstone for a hobbyhorse in that littered monument-yard in Chequers Street!