ckets shot into the air, and very noisy, too, as with guns fired
and music played, so that Jason's watery eyes felt dazzled, and his
singing ears were stunned. But he walked on, hardly knowing which way
he was going, and hearing only as sounds at sea the voices that
called to him from the doors of the drinking-shops, until he came out
at the bridge to the Thingvellir road. And there, in the sombre
darkness, he was overtaken by the three Danes who had spoken to him
before.

"So your courage failed you at the last moment--I watched you and saw
how it was. Ah, don't be afraid, we are your friends, and you are one
of us. Let us play at hide-and-seek no longer."

"They say he is going down the fiord in search of his wife's father.
Take care he does not slip away. Old Jorgen is coming back.
Good-night."

So saying, without once turning their faces towards Jason's face,
they strode past him with an indifferent air. Then Jason became
conscious that Government House was ablaze with lights, that some of
its windows were half down, that sounds of music and dancing came
from within, and that on the grass plat in front, which was lit by
torches men and women in gay costumes were strolling to and fro, in
pairs.

And turning from the bridge towards the house he saw a man go by on
horseback in the direction of the sea, and remembered in a dull way
that just there and at that hour he had seen Michael Sunlocks ride
past him in the dusk.

What happened thereafter he never rightly knew, only that in a
distempered dream he was standing with others outside the rails about
Government House while the snow began to fall through the darkness,
that he saw the dancers circling across the lighted windows and heard
the music of the flutes and violins above the steady chime of the
sea, that he knew this merry-making to be a festival of her marriage
whom he loved with a love beyond that of his immortal soul, that the
shame of his condition pained him, and the pain of it maddened him,
the madness of it swept away his consciousness, and that when he came
to himself he had forced his way into the house, thinking to meet his
enemy face to face, and was in a room alone with Greeba, who was
cowering before him with a white face of dismay.

"Jason," she was saying, "why are you here?"

"Why are _you_ here?" he asked.

"Why have you followed me?" she cried.

"Why have you followed _him_?"

"What have you come for?"

"Is _this_ what _you_ have