eymoon in a haze of Botticellis, cardinals, and chants. They stood
up and bid each other good-bye, and waving hands they parted.

Night was coming on apace, a long way lay still before him, and he
walked hastily; she being nearer home, sauntered leisurely, swinging her
parasol. The sweetness of the evening was in her blood and brain, and
the architectural beauty of the landscape--the elliptical arches of the
hills--swam before her. But she had not walked many minutes before a
tramp, like a rabbit out of a bush, sprang out of the furze where he had
been sleeping. He was a gaunt hulking fellow, six feet high.

"Now 'aven't you a copper or two for a poor fellow, Missie?"

Kitty started from him frightened. "No, I haven't, I have nothing ... go
away."

He laughed hoarsely, she ran from him. "Now, don't run so fast, Missie,
won't you give a poor fellow something?"

"I have nothing."

"Oh, yes you 'ave; what about those pretty lips?"

A few strides brought him again to her side. He laid his hand upon her
arm. She broke her parasol across his face, he laughed hoarsely. She saw
his savage beast-like eyes fixed hungrily upon her. She fainted for fear
of his look of dull tigerish cruelty. She fell....

When shaken and stunned and terrified she rose from the ground, she saw
the tall gaunt figure passing away like a shadow. The wild solitary
landscape was pale and dim. In the fading light it was a drawing made on
blue paper with a hard pencil. The long undulating lines were defined
on the dead sky, the girdle of blue encircling sea was an image of
eternity. All now was the past, there did not seem to be a present. Her
mind was rocked to and fro, and on its surface words and phrases floated
like sea weed.... To throw her down and ill-treat her. Her frock is
spoilt; they will ask her where she has been to, and how she got herself
into such a state. Mechanically she brushed herself, and mechanically,
very mechanically she picked bits of furze from her dress. She held each
away from her and let it drop in a silly vacant way, all the while
running the phrases over in her mind: "What a horrible man ... he threw me
down and ill-treated me; my frock is ruined, utterly ruined, what a
state it is in! I had a narrow escape of being murdered. I will tell
them that ... that will explain ... I had a narrow escape of being
murdered." But presently she grew conscious that these thoughts were
fictitious thoughts, and that there was a though