him like the breathing of warm new life into what had
been a crystallized emotion--the humanizing of something spiritual.
Surely, for him, it had better have remained in that first stage.

There was the sound of a light footstep on the springy turf. He started
to his feet. A girl, tall and slim, was coming swiftly along the winding
path through the plantation towards him. He knew at once that it was
Helen Thurwell.

They were both equally surprised. As she looked up and saw him standing
upright in the narrow path, tall, thin, and unnaturally pale, with the
cigarette still burning between his fingers, and his book in his other
hand, she felt strangely stirred. Neither was he unmoved by her sudden
appearance, for though not a feature twitched, not a single gleam of
color relieved the still pallor of his face, there was a new light in
his dry brilliant eyes. But there was a vast difference between the
thoughts which flashed into his mind and those which filled hers. To him
there had stolen a sweetness into the summer's day surpassing the soft
sunlight, and a presence which moved every pulse in his being, and crept
like maddening fire through every sense. And to her, the sight of him
was simply a signal to brace up all her powers of perception; to watch
with suspicion every change of his features, and every tone of his
voice. Had he shown any emotion at the sight of her, she would have
attributed it to a guilty conscience, and would have made note of it in
her mind against him. And as he showed none--none, at least, that she
could detect--she put it down to the exercise of a strong will, and was
a little disappointed. For she had gone with the tide, and, womanlike,
having embraced an idea, it had already become as truth to her. Mr.
Brown was the man who had murdered Sir Geoffrey Kynaston. It was a
murderer with whom she was standing side by side among the glancing
shadows of the rustling pine groves. It must be so!

Yet she did not shrink from him. After her first hesitation at the sight
of a man's figure standing up amongst the dark tree-trunks, she had
walked steadily on until she had reached him. And he, without any change
of countenance, had simply stood and watched her. God! how beautiful
she was! The sunlight, gleaming through the tops of the trees in long
slanting rays, played like fire upon her red-gold hair; and the plain
black gown, which yielded easily to her graceful movements, seemed to
show every line of her