er heart rose in precipitate
throbs to meet what she felt was coming. He lifted his eyes to her
entreatingly. "You do see, don't you? You understand? I'm desperate--I'm
at the end of my tether. I want to be free, and you can free me. I know
you can. You don't want to keep me bound fast in hell, do you? You can't
want to take such a vengeance as that. You were always kind--your eyes
are kind now. You say you're sorry for me. Well, it rests with you to
show it; and heaven knows there's nothing to keep you back. You
understand, of course--there wouldn't be a hint of publicity--not a sound
or a syllable to connect you with the thing. It would never come to that,
you know: all I need is to be able to say definitely: 'I know this--and
this--and this'--and the fight would drop, and the way be cleared, and
the whole abominable business swept out of sight in a second."

He spoke pantingly, like a tired runner, with breaks of exhaustion
between his words; and through the breaks she caught, as through the
shifting rents of a fog, great golden vistas of peace and safety. For
there was no mistaking the definite intention behind his vague appeal;
she could have filled up the blanks without the help of Mrs. Fisher's
insinuations. Here was a man who turned to her in the extremity of his
loneliness and his humiliation: if she came to him at such a moment he
would be hers with all the force of his deluded faith. And the power to
make him so lay in her hand--lay there in a completeness he could not
even remotely conjecture. Revenge and rehabilitation might be hers at a
stroke--there was something dazzling in the completeness of the
opportunity.

She stood silent, gazing away from him down the autumnal stretch of the
deserted lane. And suddenly fear possessed her--fear of herself, and of
the terrible force of the temptation. All her past weaknesses were like
so many eager accomplices drawing her toward the path their feet had
already smoothed. She turned quickly, and held out her hand to Dorset.

"Goodbye--I'm sorry; there's nothing in the world that I can do."

"Nothing? Ah, don't say that," he cried; "say what's true: that you
abandon me like the others. You, the only creature who could have saved
me!"

"Goodbye--goodbye," she repeated hurriedly; and as she moved away she
heard him cry out on a last note of entreaty: "At least you'll let me see
you once more?"

Lily, on regaining the Gormer grounds, struck rapidly across the la