growth, and watch her
opportunity to creep down the road and warn Carol of the danger
threatening their lives. He may even now be passing the well and
riding up the hill to death!

She rushes blindly across the room, but that instant the heavy steps
reach the verandah. Her aim is frustrated. She staggers against the
wall, extending her arms aloft with a wild gesture.

The intruder stands in the open window, his dark figure framed, in the
line between the verandah and the interior, his face illuminated by the
moon which has burst like a ghostly lamp-man over the east. She feels
like one dazed in the trammels of opium. She tries to cry out, to
shriek for help, but only one word breaks hoarsely from her lips with a
hollow groan:

"Philip!"

The man enters the room silently, his garments are thick with dust, his
coat torn as with jungle briars sharply thorned. He looks as if he had
lived in the outer air, unkempt, dishevelled! Thick black hair has
grown over the lower part of his face; but his eyes gleam as they meet
hers while he advances, his gaze riveted on Eleanor. A fierce growl
makes him turn, and his eyes fall on the lounging coat of Tussore silk
lying upon yellow cushions.

"Help" has scented it, and springing with his huge paws towards the
sofa, tears and rends it furiously in his heavy jaws with the savage
air of a lion destroying prey.

The sight is strangely horrible to Eleanor. Her eyes start from their
sockets, staring, bloodshot, fixed. Her lips are livid, her limbs
stiff, she is still drawn up against the wall at bay; but for its
support she would fall upon the ground.

Philip smiles. The action of the dog pleases him. He does not notice
the photograph of Carol, which dropped from Eleanor's hands as she
started across the room, but the heel of his dusty boot falls on the
face, crushing it under the weight of his tread, scarring the features
and cracking the card. He advances and stands passively before
Eleanor, so close that his hot breath fans her cheek, looking at her
and waiting.

The steady ticking of the clock resounds in the room; in that moment of
extreme tension it deafens her.

The silence is horrible, unendurable; she struggles to break it, and
her voice sounds to her own amazement perfectly natural.

"I know why you have come, Philip," she says calmly, and it seems that
she has lived through this moment in some past existence, so painfully
familiar are the ghastly occurr