p. Yet all the while
her sober actual common-sense was crying out upon her--and crying in
vain. Unknown appetences that had lain darkling in her blood, come down
to her from long generations, were suddenly compelling her. The curtain
began to wave in a little wind that whispered in the silk, and somewhere
in the yard below she could hear Selim nipping the clover.

She was to go or the "trouble-cloud" would carry him away!

A strange expression of mingled fright and resolve grew on her face. She
ran on tiptoe to her wardrobe and with frantic haste dragged out a rough
cloak that fell over her soft house-gown, covering it to the feet. It
had a peaked hood falling from its collar and into this she thrust the
resentful masses of her hair. Every few seconds she caught her breath in
a short gasp, and once she paused with an apprehensive glance over her
shoulder and shivered. She scarcely knew what she did, nor did she ask
herself what might be the outcome of such an absurd adventure. She
neither knew nor cared. She was swept off her feet and whirled away into
some outlandish limbo of shadowy fear and crying dread.

Slipping off her shoes, she went swiftly and noiselessly down the stair.
She let herself out of the door and, shoes on again, ran across the
clover. A hound clambered about her, whining, but she silenced him with
a whispered word. Selim lifted his head and she patted the snuffling
inquiring muzzle an instant before, with her hand on his mane, she led
him through the hedge to the stable. It was but the work of a moment to
throw on a side-saddle and buckle the girth. Then, mounting, she turned
him into the lane.

He was thoroughbred, and her tense excitement seemed to communicate
itself to him. He blew the breath through his delicate flaring nostrils
and flung up his head at her restraining hand on the bridle. Once on the
Red Road, she let him have his will. The long vacant highway reeled out
behind her to the fierce and lonely hoof-tattoo. She was scarcely
conscious of consecutive thought--all was a vague jumble of chaotic
impressions threaded by that necessity that called her like an insistent
voice.

Copse and hedge flew by, streaks of distemper on the shifting gloom;
swarthy farmhouse roofs huddled like giant Indians on the trail, and
ponds in pastures glinted back the pale glimmering of stars. The
faint mist, tangled in the branches of the trees, made them look like
ghosts gathered to see her pass. Was this