ssed now by a desire which she dared not
put in practice, to pull his head down, and rock it against her. Her
heart felt empty, and timid; to have something warm resting on it would
have made all the difference. Everything real, substantial, comforting,
seemed to have slipped away. Among these flying dark ghosts of
pine-trees--as it were the unfrequented borderland between two
worlds--the feeling of a cheek against her breast alone could help
muffle the deep disquiet in her, lost like a child in a wood.

The cab slackened speed, the driver was lighting his lamps; and his red
face appeared at the window.

"We'll 'ave to stop here, miss; I'm out of petrol. Will you get some
dinner, or go through?"

"Through," answered Barbara:

While they were passing the little time, buying then petrol, asking the
way, she felt less miserable, and even looked about her with a sort of
eagerness. Then when they had started again, she thought: If I could
get him to sleep--the sea will comfort him! But his eyes were staring,
wide-open. She feigned sleep herself; letting her head slip a little to
one side, causing small sounds of breathing to escape. The whirring of
the wheels, the moaning of the cab joints, the dark trees slipping by,
the scent of the wet fern drifting in, all these must surely help!
And presently she felt that he was indeed slipping into darkness--and
then-she felt nothing.

When she awoke from the sleep into which she had seen Miltoun fall, the
cab was slowly mounting a steep hill, above which the moon had risen.
The air smelled strong and sweet, as though it had passed over leagues
of grass.

"The Downs!" she thought; "I must have been asleep!"

In sudden terror, she looked round for Miltoun. But he was still there,
exactly as before, leaning back rigid in his corner of the cab, with
staring eyes, and no other signs of life. And still only half awake,
like a great warm sleepy child startled out of too deep slumber, she
clutched, and clung to him. The thought that he had been sitting like
that, with his spirit far away, all the time that she had been betraying
her watch in sleep, was dreadful. But to her embrace there was no
response, and awake indeed now, ashamed, sore, Barbara released him, and
turned her face to the air.

Out there, two thin, dense-black, long clouds, shaped like the wings
of a hawk, had joined themselves together, so that nothing of the moon
showed but a living brightness imprisoned, like the