she did
not know how far she was afield.

Where was he now--this hour--this moment--where was he now? Did he know
the rain, the greyness, the desolation of the world?

Once she stopped her horse on the loneliness of the marsh land, and
looked up at the low clouds about her, at the creeping mist, the dank
grass. It seemed a place in which a newly-released soul might wander
because it did not yet know its way.

"If you should be near, and come to me, you will understand," her clear
voice said gravely between the caught breaths, "what I gave you was
nothing to you--but you took it with you. Perhaps you know without my
telling you. I want you to know. When a man is dead, everything melts
away. I loved you. I wish you had loved me."

CHAPTER XLVIII

THE MOMENT

In the unnatural unbearableness of her anguish, she lost sight of
objects as she passed them, she lost all memory of what she did. She did
not know how long she had been out, or how far she had ridden. When the
thought of time or distance vaguely flitted across her mind, it seemed
that she had been riding for hours, and might have crossed one county
and entered another. She had long left familiar places behind. Riding
through and inclosed by the mist, she, herself, might have been a
wandering ghost, lost in unknown places. Where was he now--where was he
now?

Afterwards she could not tell how or when it was that she found herself
becoming conscious of the evidences that her horse had been ridden too
long and hard, and that he was worn out with fatigue. She did not know
that she had ridden round and round over the marshes, and had passed
several times through the same lanes. Childe Harold, the sure of foot,
actually stumbled, out of sheer weariness of limb. Perhaps it was this
which brought her back to earth, and led her to look around her with
eyes which saw material objects with comprehension. She had reached the
lonely places, indeed and the evening was drawing on. She was at
the edge of the marsh, and the land about her was strange to her and
desolate. At the side of a steep lane, overgrown with grass, and seeming
a mere cart-path, stood a deserted-looking, black and white, timbered
cottage, which was half a ruin. Close to it was a dripping spinney,
its trees forming a darkling background to the tumble-down house, whose
thatch was rotting into holes, and its walls sagging forward perilously.
The bit of garden about it was neglected and untidy, here and