emed to Ted an unbelievable thing that he saw happen before him
then. For Sheila stepped quickly forward to meet the hurrying, pitiful
creature who sought her; stepped forward and straight into the woman's
arms. As he stared, a shudder of disgust shook Ted from head to foot.
"It's horrible!" he muttered to himself. "It's horrible for Sheila to
let Crazy Lisbeth hug her!" But he could not go and draw Sheila away.
His repulsion would not permit him to approach the spectacle that
excited it.

And meanwhile the little girl was murmuring, still in the fold of
Lisbeth's arm, words that he could not understand, but that drifted to
him with the soft sounds of pleadings and promises.

"Sheila!" he called peremptorily.

She did not reply, but talked on to Lisbeth, interrupted now and then
by the latter, but evidently not discouraged in her purpose of
persuasion.

"Sheila!" Ted called again, and this time uneasily.

And now she answered, over her shoulder, and with a motion that held
him back: "We're going home!"

At that he understood what she was bent upon. She had been coaxing
Lisbeth to go home. But why should she concern herself about one who
was used to roam the whole countryside at any hour of the day or night,
walking unmolested in the desolate safety of her affliction? Why,
above all, should Sheila go home _with_ her?

For that, apparently, was what Sheila meant to do. She had already
started onward with her self-appointed charge, and though the woods had
grown more shadowy, Ted could see the two figures plainly, walking
close together and linked by the woman's arm. That arm about Sheila's
shoulder--Crazy Lisbeth's arm!--set him shuddering again as violently
as the first embrace had done. It was an affront to every fiber of his
thoroughly normal being. But still he could not go nearer to remove
it; by the law of his own nature he had to stay outside the circle of
Lisbeth's madness and Sheila's folly. And his sense of responsibility
had, perforce, to appease itself with his following them at a discreet
range--a distant and sulking protector.

It seemed to him, as he strode on behind them with irate steps, that
they would never get out of the woods. Little woodland sounds, a
snapping bough, a breaking leaf, a scurrying squirrel, sounds that he
would not ordinarily have noticed, now startled him into fright. The
gradual failing of the light oppressed him almost to panic; and when
the early twilight se