"Mr.
Hillward, I must ask your help," he said, and he went out with Hillward
guiding him.

Eaton, turning anxiously on his pillow and looking about the room, saw
no one but his sister. He had known when Harriet moved away from
beside the bed; but he had not suspected that she was leaving the room.
Now suddenly a great fear filled him.

"Why did Miss Santoine go away? Why did she go, Edith?" he questioned.

"You must sleep, Hugh," his sister answered only.

Harriet, when she slipped out of the room, had gone downstairs. She
could not have forced herself to leave before she had heard Hugh's
story, and she could not define definitely even to herself what the
feeling had been that had made her leave as soon as he had finished;
but she sensed the reason vaguely. Hugh had told her two days before,
"I will come back to you as you have never known me yet"--and it had
proved true. She had known him as a man in fear, constrained,
carefully guarding himself against others and against betrayal by
himself; a man to whom all the world seemed opposed; so that her
sympathy--and afterward something more than her sympathy--had gone out
to him. To that repressed and threatened man, she had told all she
felt toward him, revealing her feelings with a frankness that would
have been impossible except that she wanted him to know that she was
ready to stand against the world with him.

Now the world was no longer against him; he had friends, a place in
life was ready to receive him; he would be sought after, and his name
would be among those of the people of her own sort. She had no shame
that she had let him--and others--know all that she felt toward him;
she gloried still in it; only now--now, if he wished her, he must make
that plain; she could not, of herself, return to him.

So unrest possessed her and the suspense of something hoped for but
unfulfilled. She went from room to room, trying to absorb herself on
her daily duties; but the house--her father's house--spoke to her now
only of Hugh and she could think of nothing but him. Was he awake?
Was he sleeping? Was he thinking of her? Or, now that the danger was
over through which she had served him, were his thoughts of some one
else?

Her heart halted at each recurrence of that thought; and again and
again she repeated his words to her at parting from her the night
before. "I will come back to you as you have never known me yet!" To
her he would come back, he said;