r at last, she stepped out under the yew-trees and
wondered why she had not made her escape before. She was the first to
leave the church, and wandering down the path through the hot, chequered
sunlight she saw the shining car drawn up at the gate, and a young
chauffeur waiting at the door. She glanced at him as she passed, and was
surprised for a second to find him gazing at her with a curious
intentness. He lowered his eyes the moment they met hers, and she passed
on, wondering what there was about her to excite his interest.

Columbus was waiting with pathetic patience to be taken for a walk,
and overpoweringly hot though it was she had not the heart to keep him
any longer. But she could not face the full blaze of noon on the
shore, and she turned back up the shady church lane with a vague
memory of having seen a stile at the entrance of a wood somewhere
along its winding length.

The church-goers had dispersed by that time, but at the gate of the
schoolhouse which was a few yards above the church she saw a group of
boys waiting clamorously, and just as she found her stile she saw Green
come out dressed in flannels with a bath-towel round his neck. The boys
swarmed all about him like a crowd of excited puppies, and Juliet turned
into the wood with a smile. So he had refused the squire's invitation to
luncheon! She was very glad of that.

The green glades of the wood received her; she wandered forward with a
delightful sense of well-being. The thought of London came to her--the
heat and the dust and the fumes of petrol--the chattering crowds under
the parched trees--the kaleidoscopic glitter of fashion at its crudest
and most amazing. She knew exactly what they were all doing at that
precise moment. She visualized the shifting, restless feverish throng
with a vividness that embraced every detail. And she turned her face up
to the tree-tops and revelled in her solitude. Only last week she had
been in that seething whirlpool, borne helplessly hither and thither like
driftwood, caught here or flung there by any chance current. Only last
week she had felt the sudden drawing of the vortex, sucking her down
with appalling swiftness. Only last week! And to-day she was free. She
had awakened to the danger almost at the eleventh hour, and she had
escaped. Thank God she had escaped in time!

She suddenly wished that she had remembered to utter her thanksgiving
during that very monotonous service instead of going to sleep. Bu