"I don't see it now."

"Not now," he whispered.

They had come to the porch of the farmhouse. The door stood open. The
lamp-light drew them in. He closed the door behind them. She stood
facing him as one who waits.

"Not now," he said aloud.

He glanced round. The house and all about it was still.

"If we could always be here, Jinny----"

She turned from him, afraid.

"Why not?" he said, and followed her and took her in his arms.

He pressed back her head with one hand. His face sought hers, the face
she knew, with its look of impetuous flight, of curves blown back, the
face that seemed to lean forward, breasting the wind of its own speed.
It leaned now, swift to its desire. It covered her face. Its lips were
pressed to her lips, lips that drank her breath, that were fierce in
their drinking, after their long thirst. She pushed it from her with her
two hands and cried out, "Rose, little Rose!"

She struggled from his arms and ran from him, stumbling up the steep
stairs. A door opened and shut. He heard her feet go slowly on the floor
of her room above him. They reached the bed. She seemed to sink there.

LXIII

That night she knew that she must leave Dartmoor, and go somewhere where
George Tanqueray could not follow her and find her. She was mortally
afraid of him. He had tracked and hunted her down swiftly and more
inevitably than any destroyer or pursuer.

In spite of him, indeed because of him, her passion for this solitude of
the moors was strong upon her, and she planned to move on the next day
into Somerset, to a place on Exmoor that she knew. She would leave very
early in the morning before Tanqueray could come to her.

She lay all night staring with hot eyes at the white walls that held
her. At daylight she dropped asleep and slept on into the morning. When
she woke she faced her purpose wide-eyed and unflinching. Her fear was
there also and she faced it.

She was down too late for any train that could take her away before
noon, and Tanqueray might come now at any time.

She was so late that the day's letters waited for her on the
window-sill. In her agitation she nearly missed seeing them. One was
from Gertrude, fulfilling punctually her pledge, assuring her as usual
that all was well. The other was from her brother-in-law, Henry. It was
very brief. Henry, after expressing the hope that she continued to
benefit by the air of Dartmoor, supposed that she would have heard that
Hugh w