, he slid back the iron
shade that covered his lantern and, lighting his own steps, he walked
away.

He had moved so quietly that the girl who lay upon the bed did not hear
him. She did not, in fact, know for certain whether he had been there or
not, much less that he had gone, so that she toilsomely kept up the
pretence of that gentle snore for half an hour or more. It was very
tiresome. Her bright black eyes were wide open as she lay performing
this exercise. Her face never lost its look of strong resolution. At
length, true to her acting, she moved her head sleepily, sighed heavily,
and relapsed into silent breathing as a sleeper might. It was the acting
of a true artist.

Half an hour more of silence upon her bed, and she crept off
noiselessly; she lifted the corner of the window-curtain and looked out.
There was not a light to be seen in any of the houses within sight,
there was not a sound to be heard except the foam at the foot of the
falls, the lapping of the nearer river, and the voice of a myriad
crickets in the grass. She opened the window silently.

"Bart," she whispered. Then a little louder, "Bart--Bart Toyner."

The one thing that she wanted just then was to be alone, and of all
people in the world Toyner was the man whom she least wanted to meet.
Yet she called him. She got out of the window and took a few paces on
one side and on the other in the darkness, still calling his name in a
voice of soft entreaty. In his old drunken days she had scorned him. She
scorned him now more than ever, but she still believed that her call
would never reach his ear in vain. In this hour of her extremity she
must make sure of his absence by running the risk of having to endure
his nearer presence. When she knew that he was not there, she took a
bundle from inside the room, shut down the window through which she had
escaped, and wrapping her head and hands in a thin black shawl such as
Indian women drape themselves with, she sped off over the dark grass to
the river.

Overhead, the stars sparkled in a sky that seemed almost black. The
houses and trees, the thick scrubby bushes and long grass, were just
visible in all the shades of monochrome that night produces.

In a few minutes she was beyond all the houses, gliding through a wood
by the river. The trees were high and black, and there was a faint
musical sound of wind in them. She heard it as she heard everything.
More than once she stopped, not fearful, but watc