The priest of King’s Barton rose to his feet. With a shaky hand he deliberately poured back into the decanter his unfinished drink. Then, with awkward shuffling steps, steps that made Wolf aware for the first time that instead of boots he wore large, ragged, leather slippers, he came round the table to his guest’s side.

“I’m nothing,” he mumbled almost incoherently. “I’m nothing. But don’t you know,” he said, seizing Wolf’s hand in his dirty, feverish fingers, “don’t you know that love sinks down into the roots of the whole world? Don’t you know that there are⁠ ⁠… levels⁠ ⁠… in life⁠ ⁠… that⁠ ⁠… that⁠ ⁠… defy Nature?”

Wolf’s brain became suddenly clearer than it had been all day since he first got out of bed that morning. It seemed to him that between this confessed “morality” of Tilly-Valley and what he had already divined as the unconfessed “immorality” of Mr. Urquhart, there was a ghastly reciprocity. He suddenly felt a reaction in favour of the most simple earthborn heathenism. He deliberately finished his glass of brandy, and stood up.