leaving you behind. Why! You would vanish . . . what little
there is of you. Some rough wind will blow you away altogether. You
have no holding ground on earth. Well, then trust yourself to me--to the
sea--which is deep like your eyes."

She said: "Impossible." He kept quiet for a while, then asked in a
totally changed tone, a tone of gloomy curiosity:

"You can't stand me then? Is that it?"

"No," she said, more steady herself. "I am not thinking of you at all."

The inane voices of the Fyne girls were heard over the sombre fields
calling to each other, thin and clear. He muttered: "You could try to.
Unless you are thinking of somebody else."

"Yes. I am thinking of somebody else, of someone who has nobody to think
of him but me."

His shadowy form stepped out of her way, and suddenly leaned sideways
against the wooden support of the porch. And as she stood still,
surprised by this staggering movement, his voice spoke up in a tone quite
strange to her.

"Go in then. Go out of my sight--I thought you said nobody could love
you."

She was passing him when suddenly he struck her as so forlorn that she
was inspired to say: "No one has ever loved me--not in that way--if
that's what you mean. Nobody would."

He detached himself brusquely from the post, and she did not shrink; but
Mrs. Fyne and the girls were already at the gate.

All he understood was that everything was not over yet. There was no
time to lose; Mrs. Fyne and the girls had come in at the gate. He
whispered "Wait" with such authority (he was the son of Carleon Anthony,
the domestic autocrat) that it did arrest her for a moment, long enough
to hear him say that he could not be left like this to puzzle over her
nonsense all night. She was to slip down again into the garden later on,
as soon as she could do so without being heard. He would be there
waiting for her till--till daylight. She didn't think he could go to
sleep, did she? And she had better come, or--he broke off on an
unfinished threat.

She vanished into the unlighted cottage just as Mrs. Fyne came up to the
porch. Nervous, holding her breath in the darkness of the living-room,
she heard her best friend say: "You ought to have joined us, Roderick."
And then: "Have you seen Miss Smith anywhere?"

Flora shuddered, expecting Anthony to break out into betraying
imprecations on Miss Smith's head, and cause a painful and humiliating
explanation. She imagined him full of h