that a web of green, woven of the sparse, thin blades of the
young wheat. There were two ways up the hill; one over her own bridge
across the river, that led her to the steep straight path through the
wood; one over the Farm bridge by the slanting path up the field. She
chose the wood.

She paused on the bridge, and looked down the valley. She saw the
farm-house standing in the stillness that was its own secret and the
hour's. A strange, pale lamplight, lit too soon, showed in the windows
of the room she knew. The Powells would be sitting there at their
supper.

She went on and came to the gate of the wood. It swung open on its
hinges, a sign to her that some time or other Harding Powell had passed
there. She paused and looked about her. Presently she saw Harding Powell
coming down the wood-path.

He stopped. He had not yet seen her. He was looking up to the arch of
the beech-trees, where the green light still came through. She could see
by his attitude of quiet contemplation the sane and happy creature that
he was. He was sane, she knew. And yet, no; she could not really see him
as sane. It was her sanity, not his own that he walked in. Or else what
she saw was the empty shell of him. _He_ was in her. Hitherto it had
been in the darkness that she had felt him most, and her fear of him had
been chiefly fear of the invisible Harding, and of what he might do
there in the darkness. Now her fear, which had become almost hatred, was
transferred to his person. In the flesh, as in the spirit, he was
pursuing her.

He had seen her now. He was making straight for her. And she turned and
ran round the eastern bend of the hill (a yard or so to the left of her)
and hid from him. From where she crouched at the edge of the wood she
saw him descend the lower slope to the river; by standing up and
advancing a little she could see him follow the river path on the nearer
side and cross by the Farm bridge.

She was sure of all that. She was sure that it did not take her more
than twelve or fifteen minutes (for she had gone that way a hundred
times) to get back to the gate, to walk up the little wood, to cut
through it by a track in the undergrowth, and turn round the further and
western end of it. Thence she could either take the long path that
slanted across the field to the Farm bridge or keep to the upper ground
along a trail in the grass skirting the wood, and so reach home by the
short straight path and her own bridge.

She