her eyes, but a certain curiosity as to what I was
going to do.

"If I told you they were not looking for me," she said, "I could not,
under the circumstances, expect you to believe it."

I am too highly strung for this workaday world. I know it to my cost.
The artistic temperament has its penalties. My doctor at Cromer often
told me that I vibrated like a harp at the slightest touch. I vibrated
now. Indeed, I almost sat down in the sodden track.

But unlike many of my brothers and sisters of the pen, I am capable of
impulsive, even quixotic action, and I ought, in justice to myself, to
mention here that I had not then read that noble book "The Treasure of
Heaven," in which it will be remembered that a generous-souled woman
takes in from the storm, and nurses back to health in her lowly
cottage, an aged tramp who turns out to be a millionaire, and leaves her
his vast fortune. I did not get the idea of acting as I am about to
relate from Marie Corelli, the head of our profession, or indeed from
any other writer. But I have so often been accused of taking other
people's plots and ideas and sentiments, that I owe it to myself to make
this clear before I go on.

"You poor soul," I said, "whatever you are, and whatever you've done, I
will shelter you and help you to escape."

I felt I really could not take her into the house, so I added, "I have a
little stable in the garden, quite private, with nice dry hay in it.
Follow me."

I suppose she saw at a glance that she could trust me, for she nodded,
and I sped down the hill, she following at a little distance, with the
shrieking, denouncing wind behind us. I walked as quickly as I could,
but when I got as far as the water-meadows my strength and breath gave
way. I was never robust, and always foolishly prone to overtax my small
store of strength. I was obliged to stop and lean my head on my arms
against a stile.

"There is no need for such hurry," she said tranquilly. She had come up
noiselessly behind me. "There is not a soul in sight. Besides, look what
you are missing."

She pointed to the familiar fields before me which we had yet to cross,
with the Dieben winding through them under his low, red-brick bridges,
and beyond the little clustered village with its grey church spire
standing shoulder high above the poplars.

The sun had just set and there was no colour in the west, but over all
the homely, wind-swept landscape a solemn and unearthly light shone and
sl