elds
and ran to the road that gleamed white, far on the other side of the
cottage. Panting, she won it, crossed it, and fairly safe behind the
low growth of wayside brushes that fringed its other side, she
dashed along, farther and farther from the cottage, more and more
frightened with every gasping breath.

On and on she flew, light as a skimming leaf in the wind, the cat
bounding in easy, flexible curves beside her. Now a little brown
cottage in its plot of land sent them into the road for a moment;
now some tiny pond, a mirror for the sprinkled heavens, broke into
their course, and they skirted it more slowly, peering continuously
into its jeweled depths. With them their hurrying shadows, black on
the road, fainter on the grass, fled ceaselessly, hardly more quiet
than they. A very intoxication of fear, a panic terror almost
delicious, drove Caroline through the night, though after a while
she ran more slowly. Utterly ignorant of where she was, reckless
of where she might go, she swung along under the streaming moon,
no white moth or whispering leaf more wholly a part of the night
than she.

Whatever idea of going back she might have had was lost long ago;
however little she might have meant to range so far, she was now
beyond any turning. No wood creature, no skipping faun or startled
dryad dancing under the moon could have belonged more utterly than
she to the fragrant, mysterious world around her. The bright,
bustling life of every day, its clatter of food and drink, its
smarts and fatigues, its settled routine of work and play, all
seemed as far behind her as some old tale of another life, half
forgotten now.

Just as her pace subsided into a little skipping trot, a thick hedge
sprang up across their path, driving them into the road, and
continued, stiff and tall, along its edge. The pure pleasure of
conquering its prickly stiffness sent Caroline through it, tearing
one sleeve from her nightgown and dragging a great rent in one side
of it. Emerging into a magnificent sweep of clipped turf, where
wide, leafy boughs spread dappled moon shadows, they made for a
whispering, clucking fountain that threw a diamond column straight
toward the stars, only to break at the top into a beaded mist and
clink musically back to its marble basin. Its rhythmic tinkle, the
four ball-shaped box trees at either corner, the carved whiteness of
the marble basin, and the massive pillar-fronted stone house beyond
it, all spread a