compelling to violent
movement, Stephen's eyes were arrested by the figure of a man coming
through the aisles of the grove. At such a time any interruption of her
passion was a cause for heightening anger; but the presence of a person
was as a draught to a full-fed furnace. Most of all, in her present
condition of mind, the presence of a man--for the thought of a man lay
behind all her trouble, was as a tornado striking a burning forest. The
blood of her tortured heart seemed to leap to her brain and to suffuse
her eyes. She 'saw blood'!

It mattered not that the man whom she saw she knew and trusted. Indeed,
this but added fuel to the flame. In the presence of a stranger some of
her habitual self-restraint would doubtless have come back to her. But
now the necessity for such was foregone; Harold was her alter ego, and in
his presence was safety. He was, in this aspect, but a higher and more
intelligent rendering of the trees around her. In another aspect he was
an opportune victim, something to strike at. When the anger of a poison
snake opens its gland, and the fang is charged with venom, it must strike
at something. It does not pause or consider what it may be; it strikes,
though it may be at stone or iron. So Stephen waited till her victim was
within distance to strike. Her black eyes, fierce with passion and blood-
rimmed as a cobra's, glittered as he passed among the tree-trunks towards
her, eager with his errand of devotion.

Harold was a man of strong purpose. Had he not been, he would never have
come on his present errand. Never, perhaps, had any suitor set forth on
his quest with a heavier heart. All his life, since his very boyhood,
had been centred round the girl whom to-day he had come to serve. All
his thought had been for her: and to-day all he could expect was a gentle
denial of all his hopes, so that his future life would be at best a
blank.

But he would be serving Stephen! His pain might be to her good; ought to
be, to a certain extent, to her mental ease. Her wounded pride would
find some solace . . . As he came closer the feeling that he had to play
a part, veritably to act one, came stronger and stronger upon him, and
filled him with bitter doubt as to his power. Still he went on boldly.
It had been a part of his plan to seem to come eagerly, as a lover should
come; and so he came. When he got close to Stephen, all the witchery of
her presence came upon him as of old. After