oman almost clutched her in enfolding arms. Her answer
was a hoarse and trembling whisper.

"You come to me, my poor pretty," she said. "You come to me day or
night--_whatsoever_. I'm not so old but what I can do anything--you want
done."

The railroad journey back to London seemed unnaturally long because her
brain began to work when she found herself half blindly gazing at the
country swiftly flying past the carriage window. Perhaps the anxiousness
in Mrs. Bennett's face had wakened thought in connecting itself with
Lord Coombe's words and looks in the wood.

When the door of the house in Eaton Square opened for her she was
conscious of shrinking from the sympathetic eyes of the war-substituted
woman-servant who was the one who had found her lying on the landing.
She knew that her face was white and that her eyelids were stained and
heavy and that the woman saw them and was sorry for her.

The mountain climb of the stairs seemed long and steep but she reached
her room at last and took off her hat and coat and put on her house
dress. She did it automatically as if she were going downstairs to her
work, as though there had been no break in the order of her living.

But as she was fastening the little hooks and buttons her stunned brain
went on with the thought to which it had begun to awaken in the train.
Since the hour when she had fallen unconscious on the landing she had
not seemed to think at all. She had only _felt_ things which had nothing
to do with the real world.

There was a fire in the grate and when the last button was fastened she
sat down on a seat before it and looked into the redness of the coals,
her hands loosely clasped on her knee. She sat there for several minutes
and then she turned her head and looked slowly round the room. She did
it because she was impelled by a sense of its emptiness--by the fact
that she was quite alone in it. There was only herself--only Robin in
it.

That was her first feeling--the aloneness--and then she thought of
something else. She seemed to feel again the hand of Lord Coombe on her
shoulder when he held her back in the darkened wood and she could hear
his almost whispered words.

"In this Wood--even now--there is Something which must be saved from
suffering. It is helpless--it is blameless. It is not you--it is not
Donal--God help it."

Then she was not alone--even as she sat in the emptiness of the room.
She put up her hands and covered her face with them.