w, and made
a wild spring back to the bed. She burrowed down under the blankets, and
lay there huddled, not daring to stir for a long, long time.

With the first glimmer of day came relief, but she did not sleep. The
night's terror had left her nerves too shaken for repose. Yet as the sun
rose and the farmyard sounds began, as she heard the mill-wheel creak
and turn and the rush and roar of the water below, common sense came to
her aid, and she was able to tell herself that her night alarm might
have been due to nothing more than her own startled imagination.

On the breakfast table she found a card awaiting her, which she seized,
and read with deepening colour.

"Expect me by the afternoon train. I shall walk from the station.--K.E."

A feeling of gladness, so intense that it was almost rapture, made her
blood flow faster. He was coming in answer to her desperate summons. He
would be with her that very day. She was sure that he would tell her
what to do.

She read the card several times in the course of the morning, and came
to the conclusion that it would be only nice of her to walk to meet him.
The path lay through beech woods. She had gone part of the way with him
only three days before. Only three days! It seemed like months. She
looked forward to meeting him again as though he had been an old friend.

She started soon after the early dinner. The afternoon was hot and
sultry. She was glad to turn from the road into the shade and stillness
of the woods. The sun-rays slanting downwards through the mazy, golden
aisles made her think of the afternoon on which she had waited for him
under the dome of St. Paul's.

The heat as she proceeded became intense. The humming of many insects
filled the air with a persistent drone. It was summer at its height.

A heavy languor began to possess her. She remembered that she had not
slept all the previous night. She also recalled the panic that had kept
her awake, and smiled faintly to herself. She did not feel afraid now
that Rivington was coming. She even began to think she had been rather
foolish, and wondered if he would think so too.

She began to go more slowly. Her feet felt heavier at every step. A few
yards ahead a golden-brown stream ran babbling through the wood. It was
close to the path. She would sit down beside it and rest till he
arrived.

She reached the stream, sank down upon a bed of moss, then found the
heat intolerable, and began impulsively to loosen h