as he rode. The darkness ahead
of him was all pricked by tiny red sparks, that glanced and flashed like
fireflies whichever way he looked. He rubbed his eyes and they departed,
only to swarm again a little farther on. The rain had soaked him to the
skin. He shivered and swore again as he fumbled for his flask.

The fiery gleams faded wholly away as the raw spirit warmed his blood and
revived his brain. He drew a breath of relief. Again he heard the sound
of a horse's feet some distance in front. They seemed to fall unevenly,
as though the animal were lame. Could it be the grey, he asked himself?
If so, why had Anne not answered his call? She must have heard him. He
ground his teeth. It was like her habitual impudence to ignore him thus.
He gathered himself together and sent a furious bellow into the darkness.

But there came back no reply. The hoofs ahead seemed to quicken into a
shambling trot, that was all. And after a little he heard them no more.

She had reached the house then, and gone within into light and comfort,
and again feverishly he execrated her for not waiting for him, the cold
and the rain and the dark notwithstanding. Again fitfully he began to
see those leaping points of light; but it was only here and there.
Whenever he focussed his attention upon them they eluded him. For these
also he held his wife in some fashion responsible. What did she mean by
leaving him thus? How dared she enter the house that was his while he
was still groping without? He believed that she would shut his own door
against him if she dared. He was sure she hated him, as he hated her--as
he hated her!

And then--suddenly a strange thing happened. Suddenly, clear-cut as a
cameo before his fevered vision, there arose against the dripping
darkness his wife's face. Pale and pure as the face of a saint, it shone
before him like a star. There was no reproach in the level eyes; there
was no contempt. But they looked through him, they looked beyond him, and
saw him not.

A violent tremor went through him, a nameless, unspeakable dread. The
curses died upon his lips. He stared and stared again.

And while he stared, the vision faded before his eyes into nothingness.
He was alone once more in the darkness and the drenching rain; alone with
a little gibing voice that seemed to come from within and yet was surely
the voice of a devil jeering a devil's tattoo in time to his horse's
hoof-beats, telling him he was mad, mad, mad!

Three