Now Bignor is particularly and remotely beautiful, especially when you have left the flat country behind you and climbed up to the church by the winding³ lanes. It is pure country, almost uninvaded by modernity, and so old in the midst of its perennial⁴ youth that you might hardly wonder at meeting a Roman cohort on the march, or a bevy⁵ of bronze-haired British girls laughing and singing between the hedgerows. The village shop with its timber and thatch⁶ might be a wood-cut from a romance. The Downs rise up against the blue, and their solemn green slopes, over which the Roman highway climbs, seem to accentuate⁷ the sense of silence and of mystery. Great beech⁸ woods shut in steep, secret meadows. There are lush valleys where the grass grows tall, and flowers dream in the sunlight.

 

The three women came to Bignor church, and camped out in the churchyard to make their midday meal. Eve Carfax was one of them, brown, bright-eyed, with a red mouth that smiled mysteriously at beauty. Next to her sat Joan Gaunt, lean, strenuous⁹, with Roman nose, and abrupt¹⁰ sharp-edged mouth. Her wrists and hands were big-boned and thin. The line of her blouse and skirt showed hardly a curve. She wore square-toed Oxford¹¹ shoes, and very thick brown stockings. Lizzie Straker sat a little apart, restless even in

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