inimical to him. His excessive amiability, his air of unsuspecting
sincerity, had disarmed her. But this time, she determined, there would
be no more fencing. She would attack straightforwardly.

The day they left the girl lightly bade Ewing farewell with talk of
meetings in town. He had not told her of a resolve formed the day before
when they had ridden to a hill above the village from which they could
see veritable mountains in the distance--his own delectable mountains
they had seemed, calling to him. Instantly he had determined to go back
to his own. Not in defeat, but for fresh courage. He would stay there
working as he could, until Teevan was paid. Then the Rookery would know
him again, and the men of the Monastery--know him going his own way.

He was meditating gloomily on his retreat as the train bore him back to
town with Mrs. Laithe. And she, alive to the distress that showed in his
face, forgot everything but him, the one she had helplessly and
irrevocably taken for her own, half her entreating child, half her
master, terrible and beloved. She watched his face from half-closed
eyes, finding it unutterably sad, and, without her being able to
withhold it, her mind constantly repeated the image of an embrace, to
soothe and sustain him. Incessantly this unsubstantial enfoldment took
place in her inner sense, like some wild drama among ocean-bed things,
far below an unrippled surface. Over and over the phantom woman beat
down his enemies, encircled him from harm, consoled him against her
heart, cherished him like the dear walls of a home. And she could not
halt this phantom play. Once she divided her arms and raised them a
little, as one in a dream faintly acts his vision. Ewing thought she was
drawing her chiffon boa about her, and he replaced it on her shoulders.

Floating about this obsession in her mind was the dismayed thought of
Teevan. She was fixed on going to him for the truth, and this disturbed
her like a coming battle. She was not used to the feeling of antagonism,
she, with her gentle woman's life, but she felt an unknown energy
welling up in her--the fierceness of the defender. She would have the
truth from Teevan.

CHAPTER XXIV

EWING INTERRUPTS

Eleanor Laithe started from a half sleep. She had begun to dream while
still conscious of the library walls, the couch on which she lay, the
curtains swelling in and out of the opened windows with a heated breeze
of late afternoon, the rattl