'm choking."

Snatching up his hat, he rushed from me. I did not dare to follow.

After waiting some time, and listening till all was quiet in the house,
I could bear the suspense no longer and went out.

I thought I should find him on the Flat--probably in his favourite
walk, his "terrace," as he called it, where he had first seen, and must
have seen many a day after, that girlish figure tripping lightly along
through the morning sunshine and morning dew. I had a sort of instinct
that he would be there now; so I climbed up the shortest way, often
losing my footing; for it was a pitch-dark night, and the common looked
as wide, and black, and still, as a midnight sea.

John was not there; indeed, if he had been I could scarcely have seen
him; I could see nothing but the void expanse of the Flat, or, looking
down, the broad river of mist that rolled through the valley, on the
other side of which twinkled a few cottage lights, like unearthly
beacons from the farthest shore of an impassable flood.

Suddenly I remembered hearing Mrs. Tod say that, on account of its pits
and quarries, the common was extremely dangerous after dark, except to
those who knew it well. In a horrible dread I called out John's
name--but nothing answered. I went on blindly, desperately shouting as
I went. At length, in one of the Roman fosses, I stumbled and fell.
Some one came, darting with great leaps through the mist, and lifted me
up.

"Oh! David--David!"

"Phineas--is that you? You have come out this bitter night--why did
you?"

His tenderness over me, even then, made me break down. I forgot my
manhood, or else it slipped from me unawares. In the old Bible
language, "I fell on his neck and wept."

Afterwards I was not sorry for this, because I think my weakness gave
him strength. I think, amidst the whirl of passion that racked him it
was good for him to feel that the one crowning cup of life is not
inevitably life's sole sustenance; that it was something to have a
friend and brother who loved him with a love--like Jonathan's--"passing
the love of women."

"I have been very wrong," he kept repeating, in a broken voice; "but I
was not myself. I am better now. Come--let us go home."

He put his arm round me to keep me warm, and brought me safely into the
house. He even sat down by the fire to talk with me. Whatever
struggle there had been, I saw it was over, he looked his own
self--only so very, very pale--and spoke in h