Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/226

 it, rank upon rank and shoulder to shoulder, stood the Hurlers. She called to Sears Ripley and groping like a blind man he came to join her. They sat on one overturned giant and still in whispers speculated upon the vanished races. They felt like hunters who have stalked their prey and only after the most prodigious cunning out-manœuvred their victims. Both were glad of the fog. How comparatively prosaic it would have been if they had seen the stone circles for miles and walked straight into them! Lanice tried to describe to him how that first great stone had cut through the fog like the bow of a ship.

They planned the article which Lanice—with Ripley's help—should write for the 'Journal.' 'I shall begin,' she cried, 'with a quotation from Dr. Paisley—in fact the whole article will, in a way, be about him, only he will be much in the background, and the druids in the foreground.' He was enthusiastic, and, as he told her exactly where she could get the information about druids, Lanice lapsed into silence and had time to recall the strange, impossible fact, that only last night she had made up her mind to 'let him have it over with' to-day. Obviously she should have felt relieved to find that the Professor had no amorous secrets of which he needs must be delivered. It should have been pleasant for her to think that their beautiful friendship would not be overshadowed by any 'lusts of the body' (as Miss Bigley would have said). Obviously it was destined to remain 'on the higher plane.' She moved restlessly. She wished she knew of what he was really