towels, or I should have caught you
up before."

He was laughing as he spoke, but it seemed to Avery that there was
something not quite normal about him. His black hair lay in a wet plaster
on his forehead, and below it his eyes glittered oddly, as if he were
putting some force upon himself.

"How in the world did you get here?" she said.

He laughed again between his teeth. "I tell you, I've been here for
hours. I came last night. But I couldn't knock you up at two in the
morning. So I had to wait. How are you and Jeanie getting on?"

Avery gravely withdrew her hands, and turned to pursue her way towards
her rocky resting-place. "Jeanie is better," she said, in a voice that
did not encourage any further solicitude on either Jeanie's behalf or
her own.

Piers marched beside her, a certain doggedness in his gait. The laughter
had died out of his face. He looked pale and stern, and fully as
determined as she.

"Why didn't you tell us to expect you?" Avery asked at last.

"Were you not expecting me?" he returned, and his voice had the sharpness
of a challenge.

She looked at him steadily for a moment or two, meeting eyes that flung
back her scrutiny with grim defiance.

"Of course I was not expecting you," she said.

"And yet you were not--altogether--surprised to see me," he rejoined, a
faint jeering echo in his voice.

Avery walked on till she reached her sheltered corner. Then she laid her
work-bag down in the accustomed place, and very resolutely turned and
faced him.

"Tell me why you have come!" she said.

He gazed at her for a moment fiercely from under his black brows; then
suddenly and disconcertingly he seized her by the wrists.

"I'll tell you," he said, speaking rapidly, with feverish utterance.
"I've come because--before Heaven--I can't keep away. Avery, listen to
me! Yes, you must listen. I've come because I must, because you are all
the world to me and I want you unutterably. I don't believe--I can't
believe--that I am nothing to you. You can't with honesty tell me so. I
love you with all my soul, with all there is of me, good and bad.
Avery--Avery, say you love me too!"

Just for an instant the arrogance went out of his voice, and it sank to
pleading. But Avery stood mute before him, very pale, desperately calm.
She made not the faintest attempt to free herself, but her hands were
hard clenched. There was nothing passive in her attitude.

He was aware of strong resistance, but it only g