for her. The retriever
went straight, without a fault, to the pit-shaft, and May was discovered
alive and unscathed, save for a contusion of the face and a sprain in
the wrist.

Her suicidal plunge had been arrested, at only a few feet from the top
of the shaft, by a cross-stay of timber, upon which she lay prone. There
was no reason why the affair should be made public, and it was not. It
was suppressed into one of those secrets which embed themselves in the
history of families, and after two or three generations blossom into
romantic legends full of appropriate circumstantial detail.

Lionel Woolley spent a woeful night at his rooms. He did not know what
to do, and on the following day May Lawton encountered him again, and
proved by her demeanour that the episode of the previous afternoon had
caused no estrangement. Lionel vacillated. The sway of the
schoolmistress was almost restored, and it would have been restored
fully had he not been preoccupied by a feverish curiosity--the curiosity
to know whether or not May Deane was dead. He felt that she must indeed
be dead, and he lived through the day expectant of the news of her
sudden decease. Towards night his state of mind was such that he was
obliged to call at the Deanes'. May heard him, and insisted on seeing
him; more, she insisted on seeing him alone in the breakfast-room, where
she reclined, interestingly white, on the sofa. Her father and brothers
objected strongly to the interview, but they yielded, afraid that a
refusal might induce hysteria and worse things.

And when Lionel Woolley came into the room, May, steeped in felicity,
related to him the story of her impulsive crime.

'I was so happy,' she said, 'when I knew that Miss Lawton had deceived
me.' And before he could inquire what she meant, she continued rapidly:
'I must have been unconscious, but I felt you were there, and something
of me went out towards you. And oh! the answer to your question--I heard
your question; the real _me_ heard it, but that _something_ could not
speak.'

'My question?'

'You asked a question, didn't you?' she faltered, sitting up.

He hesitated, and then surrendered himself to her immense love and sank
into it, and forgot May Lawton.

'Yes,' he said.

'The answer is yes. Oh, you must have known the answer would be yes! You
did know, didn't you?'

He nodded grandly.

She sighed with delicious and overwhelming joy.

In the ecstasy of the achievement of her desire