chained the heavy front door as quietly as she could.

IV

She was outside, amid all the influences of the night. Gradually her
eyes accustomed themselves again to the gloom. She passed along the
facade of the house until she came to the corner, where the breeze
surprised her, and whence she could discern the other house and, across
the indistinct hedge, the other garden. Where was Edwin Clayhanger? Was
he wandering in the other garden, or had he entered the house? Then a
brief flare lit up a lower window of the dark mass for a few instants.
He was within. She hesitated. Should she go forward, or should she go
back? At length she went forward, and, finding in the hedge the gap
which Clayhanger had made, forced her way through it. Her skirt was torn
by an obstinate twig. Quite calmly she bent down and with her fingers
examined the rent; it was not important. She was now in the garden of
the Clayhangers, and he whom she sought was moving somewhere in the
house. "Supposing I _do_ meet him," she thought, "what shall I say to
him?" She did not know what she should say to him, nor why she had
entered upon this singular adventure. But the consciousness of self, the
fine, disturbing sense of being alive in every vein and nerve, was a
rich reward for her audacity. She wished that that tense moment of
expectation might endure for ever.

She approached the house, trembling. It was not by volition that she
walked over the uneven clayey ground, but by instinct. She was in front
of the garden-porch, and here she hesitated again, apparently waiting
for a sign from the house. She glanced timidly about her, as though in
fear of marauders that might spring out upon her from the shadow. Just
over the boundary wall the placid flame of a gas-lamp peeped. Then,
feeling with her feet for the steps, she ascended into the shelter of
the porch. Almost at the same moment there was another flare behind the
glass of the door; she heard the sound of unlatching; the flare expired.
She was absolutely terror-struck now.

The door opened, grating on some dirt or gravel.

"Who's there?" demanded a queer, shaking voice.

She could see his form.

"Me!" she answered, in a harsh tone which was the expression of her
dismay.

The deed was done, irretrievably. In her bedroom she had said that she
would try to speak with him, and lo! they were face to face, in the
dark, in secret! Her terror was now, at any rate, desperately calm. She
had plunged; sh