Reddin, leaning heavily on the low wall, staring at the drunken
tombstones and the quiet moon-silvered house, thought:

'She was made for me.'

Both men saw her as what they wanted her to be, not as she was.

Many thoughts darkened Reddin's face as he stood there hour after hour
in the cold May night. The rime whitened his broad shoulders as he
leaned on the wall, and in the moonlight the sprinkling of white hairs
at his temples shone out from the black as if to mock this young
passion that had possessed him.

God's Little Mountain lay shrugged in slumber; the woods crouched like
beaten creatures under the night; the small soft leaves hung limply in
the frost.

Still Reddin stood there, chilled through and through, brooding upon
the house.

Not until dawn, like a knife, gashed the east with blood did he stir.

He sighed. 'Too late!' he said.

Then he laughed. 'Beaten by the parson!'

A demoniac rage surged in him. He picked up a piece of rock, and
lifting it in both arms, flung it at the house. It smashed the kitchen
window. But before Edward came to his window Reddin was out of sight in
the batch.