. He drew
her arm into his, and turned their backs upon the picnic scene.

"Let us walk a little up the path into the woods," he said, "and get
away from all this."

"The further away the better," she answered bitterly, and he felt the
shiver run through her again as she spoke.

The methodical waltz-music from that unseen dancing platform rose again
above all other sounds. They moved up the woodland path, their steps
insensibly falling into the rhythm of its strains, and vanished from
sight among the trees.

CHAPTER XXIV

Theron and Celia walked in silence for some minutes, until the noises
of the throng they had left behind were lost. The path they followed had
grown indefinite among the grass and creepers of the forest carpet;
now it seemed to end altogether in a little copse of young birches, the
delicately graceful stems of which were clustered about a parent stump,
long since decayed and overgrown with lichens and layers of thick moss.

As the two paused, the girl suddenly sank upon her knees, then threw
herself face forward upon the soft green bark which had formed itself
above the roots of the ancient mother-tree. Her companion looked down
in pained amazement at what he saw. Her body shook with the violence
of recurring sobs, or rather gasps of wrath and grief Her hands, with
stiffened, claw-like fingers, dug into the moss and tangle of tiny
vines, and tore them by the roots. The half-stifled sounds of weeping
that arose from where her face grovelled in the leaves were terrible
to his ears. He knew not what to say or do, but gazed in resourceless
suspense at the strange figure she made. It seemed a cruelly long time
that she lay there, almost at his feet, struggling fiercely with the
fury that was in her.

All at once the paroxysms passed away, the sounds of wild weeping
ceased. Celia sat up, and with her handkerchief wiped the tears and
leafy fragments from her face. She rearranged her hat and the braids of
her hair with swift, instinctive touches, brushed the woodland debris
from her front, and sprang to her feet.

"I'm all right now," she said briskly. There was palpable effort in her
light tone, and in the stormy sort of smile which she forced upon her
blotched and perturbed countenance, but they were only too welcome to
Theron's anxious mood.

"Thank God!" he blurted out, all radiant with relief. "I feared you were
going to have a fit--or something."

Celia laughed, a little artificially a