were, some vast procession marching joyously over hill and dale to
the music of the birds and the wind; and at night, a brooding host,
silent yet animate, waiting the signal of the dawn.

Diana passed through them, drinking in the exaltation of their silence
and their strength, yet driven on by the mere weakness and foolishness
of love. By following the curve of the down she could reach a point on
the hill-side whence, on a rising ground to the north, Tallyn was
visible. She hastened thither through the night. Once she was startled
by a shot fired from a plantation near the path, trees began to rustle
and dogs to bark, and she fled on, in terror lest the Tallyn keepers
might discover her. Alack!--for whose pleasure were they watching now?

The trees fell back. She reached the bare shoulder of the down.
Northward and eastward spread the plain; and on the low hill in front
her eyes discerned the pale patch of Tallyn, flanked by the darkness of
the woods. And in that dim front, a light--surely a light?--in an upper
window. She sank down in a hollow of the chalk, her eyes upon the house,
murmuring and weeping.

So she watched with Oliver, as once--at the moment of her sharpest
pain--he had watched with her. But whereas in that earlier night
everything was in the man's hands to will or to do, the woman felt
herself now helpless and impotent. His wealth, his mother hedged him
from her. And if not, he had forgotten her altogether for Alicia; he
cared for her no more; it would merely add to his burden to be reminded
of her. As to Alicia--the girl who could cruelly leave him there, in
that house of torture, to go and dance and amuse herself--leave him in
his pain, his mother in her sorrow--Diana's whole being was shaken
first with an anguish of resentful scorn, in which everything personal
to herself disappeared. Then--by an immediate revulsion--the thought of
Alicia was a thought of deliverance. Gone?--gone from between them?--the
flaunting, triumphant, heartless face?

Suddenly it seemed to Diana that she was there beside him, in the
darkened room--that he heard her, and looked up.

"Diana!"

"Oliver!" She knelt beside him--she raised his head on her breast--she
whispered to him; and at last he slept. Then hostile forms crowded about
her, forbidding her, driving her away--even Sir James Chide--in
the name of her own youth. And she heard her own answer: "Dear
friend!--think!--remember! Let me stay!--let me stay! Am I not