pers' cottage; and the girl
stood up in the car and turned her splendid face to the sun.

Evan seemed startled by the stillness, like one who had been born amid
sound and speed. He wavered on his long legs as he stood up; he pulled
himself together, and the only consequence was that he trembled from
head to foot. Turnbull had already opened the door on his side and
jumped out.

The moment he had done so the strange young woman had one more mad
movement, and deliberately drove the car a few yards farther. Then she
got out with an almost cruel coolness and began pulling off her long
gloves and almost whistling.

"You can leave me here," she said, quite casually, as if they had met
five minutes before. "That is the lodge of my father's place. Please
come in, if you like--but I understood that you had some business."

Evan looked at that lifted face and found it merely lovely; he was far
too much of a fool to see that it was working with a final fatigue
and that its austerity was agony. He was even fool enough to ask it a
question. "Why did you save us?" he said, quite humbly.

The girl tore off one of her gloves, as if she were tearing off her
hand. "Oh, I don't know," she said, bitterly. "Now I come to think of
it, I can't imagine."

Evan's thoughts, that had been piled up to the morning star, abruptly
let him down with a crash into the very cellars of the emotional
universe. He remained in a stunned silence for a long time; and that, if
he had only known, was the wisest thing that he could possibly do at the
moment.

Indeed, the silence and the sunrise had their healing effect, for when
the extraordinary lady spoke again, her tone was more friendly and
apologetic. "I'm not really ungrateful," she said; "it was very good of
you to save me from those men."

"But why?" repeated the obstinate and dazed MacIan, "why did you save us
from the other men? I mean the policemen?"

The girl's great brown eyes were lit up with a flash that was at once
final desperation and the loosening of some private and passionate
reserve.

"Oh, God knows!" she cried. "God knows that if there is a God He has
turned His big back on everything. God knows I have had no pleasure in
my life, though I am pretty and young and father has plenty of money.
And then people come and tell me that I ought to do things and I do
them and it's all drivel. They want you to do work among the poor; which
means reading Ruskin and feeling self-righteous in