ore slowly now over the rough, uneven, stony road, and
she was aware, more than of anything else, of a pain in her chest where
she could not draw a long breath. It seemed to her that she must be now
wholly in the bad dream, for she had the nightmare sensation of running
with all her strength and not advancing at all. The somber, thick-set
pines seemed to be implacably in the same place, no matter how she tried
to pass them, to leave them behind, to hurry on. Everything else in the
silent, breathless, midsummer forest was rooted immovably deep in the
earth. She alone was killing herself with haste, and yet futilely . . .
not able to get forward, not able to . . .

* * * * *

And then, fit to turn her brain, the forest drew aside and showed her
another nightmare figure, a man, far away to her right, running down the
steep incline that sloped up to the Rocks. A man running as she had been
wishing she could run, a powerful, roughly dressed man, rapt in a
passion of headlong flight, that cast him down the rough slope, over the
rocks, through the brambles, as though his flight were part of an
endless fall.

Marise stopped stock-still, shocked out of every sensation but the
age-old woman's instinct of fear and concealment.

The man plunged forward, not seeing her where she stood on the road
across which he now burst, flinging himself out of the pines on one side
and into the thicket of undergrowth on the other.

Far from him as she was, Marise could hear, through the forest hush, the
terrible sound of his breathing as he ran, as he stumbled, as he
struggled to his feet, fighting crazily with the thick undergrowth.
Those loud hoarse gasps . . . it was as though he were being choked to
death by a hand on his throat.

He was gone, down the slope towards the valley road. The leaves closed
together behind him. The forest was impenetrably silent again. Marise
knew who he was, then, recognized him for 'Gene Powers beyond any doubt.

She felt a strange mixture of pity and scorn and envy. To be so
primitive as that . . . to think, even for an instant's madness, that you
could run away on your own two poor human feet from whatever life
brought to you!

* * * * *

She herself was hurrying forward again. What was she going to? What had
she left behind? The passage of the other runner had not taken a single
moment's time. She was now at the path which led to Cousin Het