led with its gleams the silent trees that had given up all rustling.
Suddenly Derek said:

"He's walking with us! Look! Over there!"

And for a second there did seem to Nedda a dim, gray shape moving square
and dogged, parallel with them at the stubble edges. Gasping out:

"Oh, no; don't frighten me! I can't bear it tonight!" She hid her face
against his shoulder like a child. He put his arm round her and she
pressed her face deep into his coat. This ghost of Bob Tryst holding him
away from her! This enemy! This uncanny presence! She pressed closer,
closer, and put her face up to his. It was wonderfully lonely, silent,
whispering, with the moongleams slipping through the willow boughs into
the shadow where they stood. And from his arms warmth stole through her!
Closer and closer she pressed, not quite knowing what she did, not quite
knowing anything but that she wanted him never to let her go; wanted his
lips on hers, so that she might feel his spirit pass, away from what was
haunting it, into hers, never to escape. But his lips did not come to
hers. They stayed drawn back, trembling, hungry-looking, just above her
lips. And she whispered:

"Kiss me!"

She felt him shudder in her arms, saw his eyes darken, his lips quiver
and quiver, as if he wanted them to, but they would not. What was it?
Oh, what was it? Wasn't he going to kiss her--not to kiss her? And
while in that unnatural pause they stood, their heads bent back among the
moongleams and those willow shadows, there passed through Nedda such
strange trouble as she had never known. Not kiss her! Not kiss her!
Why didn't he? When in her blood and in the night all round, in the feel
of his arms, the sight of his hungry lips, was something unknown,
wonderful, terrifying, sweet! And she wailed out:

"I want you--I don't care--I want you!" She felt him sway, reel, and
clutch her as if he were going to fall, and all other feeling vanished in
the instinct of the nurse she had already been to him. He was ill again!
Yes, he was ill! And she said:

"Derek--don't! It's all right. Let's walk on quietly!"

She got his arm tightly in hers and drew him along toward home. By the
jerking of that arm, the taut look on his face, she could feel that he
did not know from step to step whether he could stay upright. But she
herself was steady and calm enough, bent on keeping emotion away, and
somehow getting him back along the river-path, abandoned now to