ch a thing!"

She could say no more; but her attitude, fiercely instinct, through all
her physical weakness, with her roused best self, was speech enough. He
did not venture to approach her. She walked away. He heard the door
close, hurrying steps on the little stairs, then silence.

He remained where she had left him, leaning against the latticed wall
for some time. When he moved it was to pick up a piece of maidenhair
which had dropped from her dress.

"That was a scene!" he said, looking at it, and at the trembling of his
own hand. "It carries one back to the days of the Romantics. Was I
Alfred de Musset?--and she George Sand? Did any of them ever taste a
more poignant moment than I--when she--lay upon my breast? To be
helpless--yet yield nothing--it challenged me! Yet I took no
advantage--none. When she _looked_--when her eye, her _soul_, was, for
that instant, mine, then!--Well!--the world has rushed with me since I
saw her on the stairs; life can bring me nothing of such a quality
again. What did I say?--how much did I mean? My God! how can I tell? I
began as an actor, did I finish as a man?"

He paced up and down, thinking; gradually, by the help of an iron will
quieting down each rebellious pulse.

"That poacher fellow did me a good turn. _Dare_! the word galled. But,
after all, what woman could say less? And what matter? I have held her
in my arms, in a setting--under a moon--worthy of her. Is not life
enriched thereby beyond robbery? And what harm? Raeburn is not injured.
_She_ will never tell--and neither of us will ever forget. Ah!--what was
that?"

He walked quickly to the window. What he had heard had been a dull
report coming apparently from the woods beyond the eastern side of the
avenue. As he reached the window it was followed by a second.

"That poacher's gun?--no doubt!"--he strained his eyes in
vain--"Collision perhaps--and mischief? No matter! I have nothing to do
with it. The world is all lyric for me to-night. I can hear in it no
other rhythm."

* * * * *

The night passed away. When the winter morning broke, Marcella was lying
with wide sleepless eyes, waiting and pining for it. Her candle still
burnt beside her; she had had no courage for darkness, nor the smallest
desire for sleep. She had gone through shame and anguish. But she would
have scorned to pity herself. Was it not her natural, inevitable
portion?

"I will tell Aldous everything--_everythin