Wintersmoon

Walpole wrote horror novels that tended more towards the psychological rather than supernatural, with a brooding underlying mysticism. Wintersmoon begins: "I am asking you again to marry me as I did a fortnight ago. Janet Grandison turned towards him and said: Yes. You've been very honest. I believe, he said, honesty to be the only thing for us. From the beginning I have always known that you valued that-honesty I mean-more perhaps than anything. I value it too. She smiled. I believe you do. But we all do. We make a fetish of it. It seems to me sometimes almost the only good thing that has survived the war. Well, she went on, I have had the fortnight I begged for. A fortnight ago you asked me to marry you. You said you weren't in love with me but that you liked and respected me, that you thought we would get on well together. You want me to be the mother of your children."