y the grim spectre
so foreign to his experience.

"And did you care so very much?" she ventured, her heart beginning to
beat high again. For answer he gently raised her cheek to his and held
her close. There was no need of words to tell her how much he was
moved, for he had never held her thus before. Through her lover's
strange moods of fierce tenderness and stern denial she had won her way
at last, as she now believed, to a perfect understanding. He could not
live without her; it was merely a question of time.

His continued tenderness gave her reason to believe that this assurance
was justified. Only at the gate, when he bade her good-night, did he
seem to be seized once more in the grip of contending emotions. He
started to go without a word or kiss, then, turning back, he took her
in his arms with a grip that hurt, calling her his Lena, his little
girl, his wife. The last word broke from him with an intensity that
caused the blood to riot in her heart, a joy that was shot through with
wondering fear of the passion she had aroused.

When his figure had disappeared in the darkness, she left the gate and
entered the kitchen through the low window which the cook had left
unlocked against her coming. She lighted a candle, and looked at
herself curiously in a mirror that hung on the wall. The grain of the
cheap glass distorted her features, but reflected faithfully her
heightened colour and the drops that sparkled like jewels in her light
hair. Apparently she was satisfied with the inspection, for she smiled
happily, and then went slowly upstairs to her narrow room beneath the
roof.

Meanwhile, Emmet was striding along the gleaming street, regardless of
the increasing rain that soaked him to the skin. From time to time he
shot out his arm violently, as if he would push back some invisible
foe, or would extricate himself from the meshes of a net that was
closing in upon him. Again, he swore aloud, as one who curses a malign
and unmerited fate.

CHAPTER VII

THE STAR-GAZERS

In the following night the storm terminated its triduan existence some
time between darkness and dawn. It must have been in the earlier hours
that the change occurred, for Warwick gazed from its windows in the
morning to find the ground rimed with hoar-frost, that looked like
streaks of crusted salt. The sun was scarcely three hours in the
ascendant before the frost disappeared, like the withdrawal of a
silvery veil, discl