had never before
known, she sat and faced it, faced the advancing phantom from the
shadowy presence of which she had so often shrunk appalled. And the beat
of her heart rose up in the silence above the sound of the sea till she
thought the mad race of it would kill her.

Slowly the seconds throbbed away, the torture swept towards her. She was
as one who, fascinated, watches a forest-fire while he waits to be
engulfed.

Presently, from the shadows behind, the great dog Cork came like a ghost
and gave them stately welcome. He licked Olga's quivering hands,
standing beside her in earnest solicitude.

Nick rose to his feet and moved a little away. His hand was hard
clenched against his side. He could not help, it seemed. He could only
look on in impotence, while she suffered.

Slowly at last Olga raised her head and looked at him with tragic eyes.
Her face was white and strained, but she had in a measure regained her
self-control.

"I am going upstairs," she said, "just for a little while. Don't come
with me, Nick! Wait for me! Wait for me!"

She rose with the words, swayed a little, then recovered herself, and,
with her hand on Cork's head, moved slowly away down the great hall.

Dumbly Nick stood and watched the slim young figure with the wolf-hound
pacing gravely beside it. At the end, immediately below the east window,
she paused, and he saw her drawn face upraised to the dreadful picture
above her; then, still slowly, she turned, and, with the dog, passed out
of sight under the southern archway.

For a long, long space he waited in the utter stillness. He had faced a
good many difficulties in his life and endured a good many adversities,
but this thing stood by itself, unique in his experience, with a pain
that was all its own. He would have given much to have gone with her, to
have held her up while the storm raged round her, to have borne with her
that which, it seemed, she could only bear alone. But, since this was
denied him, he could only wait with set teeth while his little pal went
through that fiery trial of hers, wait and picture her agonizing in
solitude, wait till she should come back to him with all the gladness
gone for ever from her eyes,--a woman who could never be young again.

Slowly the minutes dragged on till half an hour had passed. He fell to
pacing up and down in a fever of anxiety. Would she never come back? She
had begged him to wait for her, but he began to feel he could not wait
an