rs. In her sleep she
had involuntarily responded to the call of Charley's approach.

Once, in the past, the night her uncle died, she had walked in her
sleep, and the memory of this flashed upon Charley now. Silently he came
closer to her. The moonlight shone on her face. He could see plainly
she was asleep. His position was painful and perilous. If she waked, the
shock to herself would be great; if she waked and saw him, what disaster
might not occur!

Yet he had no agitation now, only clearness of mind and a curious sense
of confusion that he should see her en dishabille--the old fastidious
sense mingling with the feeling that she was now a stranger to him, and
that, waking, she would fly embarrassed from his presence, as he was
ready to fly from hers. He was about to steal to the door and escape
before she waked, but she turned round, moved through the doorway, and
glided down the hall. He followed silently.

She moved to the staircase, then slowly down it, and through a passage
to a morning-room, where, opening a pair of French windows, she passed
out onto the lawn. He followed, not more than a dozen paces behind her.
His safety lay in getting outside, where he could easily hide among the
bushes, should someone else appear and an alarm be raised.

She crossed the lawn swiftly, a white, ghostlike figure. In the middle
of the lawn she stopped short once as if in doubt what to do--as a
thought-reader pauses in his search for the mental scent again, ere he
rushes upon the object of his search with the certainty of instinct.

Presently she moved on, going directly towards a gate that opened out
on the cliff above the river. In Charley's day this gate had been often
used, for it gave upon four steep wooden steps leading to a narrow shelf
of rock below. From the edge of this cliff a rope-ladder dropped fifty
feet to the river. For years he had used this rope-ladder to get down to
his boat, and often, when they were first married, Kathleen used to
come and watch him descend, and sometimes, just at the very first, would
descend also. As he stole into the grounds this evening he had noticed,
however, that the rope-ladder was gone, and that new steps were being
built. He had also mechanically observed that the gate was open.

For an instant he watched her slowly moving towards the gate. At first
he did not realise the situation. Suddenly her danger flashed upon him.
Passing through the gateway, she must fall over the clif