treets that he had just left.

"It's an Idea," he repeated over and over, as he stood there. "It's an
Idea. . . . You are like any one else--you are as you were . . . before
. . . everything. There is no mark--no one knows."

For it seemed to him that above him, around him, always before him and
behind him there was a grey shadow, and that as men approached him this
shadow, bending, whispered, and, as they came to him, they flung at him
a frightened glance . . . and passed.

If only he might take the arm of any one of those bright and careless
young men and say to him, "I killed Carfax--thus and thus it was." Oh!
the relief! the lifting of the weight! For then--and only then--this
pursuing Shadow, so strangely grave, not cruel, but only relentless,
would step back. Because that confession--how clearly he knew it!--was
the thing that God demanded. So long as he kept silence he resisted
the Pursuer--so long as he resisted the Pursuer he must fly, he must
escape--first into Silence, then into Sound, then back again to Silence.
Somewhere, behind his actual consciousness: there was the knowledge
that, did he once yield himself, life would be well, but that yielding
meant Confession, Renunciation, Devotion. It was not because it was
Carfax that he had killed, but it was because it was God that had spoken
to him, that he fled.

A fortnight ago he would have been already defeated--the Pursuer should
have caught him, bound him, done with him as he would. But now--in that
same instant that young Craven had looked at him with challenge in his
eyes, in that instant also he, Olva, had looked at Margaret.

In that silence, yesterday evening, in the dark drawing-room the two
facts had together leapt at him--he loved Margaret Craven, he was
suspected by Rupert Craven. Love had thus, terribly, grimly, and yet so
wonderfully, sprung into his heart that had never, until now, known its
lightest touch. Because of it--because Margaret Craven must never know
what he had done--he must fight Craven, must lie and twist and
turn. . . . His soul must belong to Margaret Craven, not to this
terrible, unperturbed, pursuing God.

All night he had fought for control. A very little more and he would
rush crying his secret to the whole world; slowly he had summoned calm
back to him. Rupert Craven should be defeated; he would, quietly, visit
Sannet Wood, face it in its naked fact, stand before it and examine
it--and fight down once and for all this