od service--_voyez_--my
feet are dry, and all I would ask is a light to cheer me while you are
absent, but that I cannot have and I must be content. Although that
unnatural dark is over, the shades of the true night will soon be
falling and it is lonely here. So the sooner you go the better."

"But where can I go? Will it not be better to remain here with you
until Father Rielle returns?"

"I think not--he is slow--that priest! See--if you go now, you will
surely overtake him. Keep to your right after regaining the road and
you will soon find the lake."

"Well, then, I will go," said Ringfield rising. "But if I might speak
to you now, might tell you all I hope and fear and think almost
continually, if I might ask you, too, to think about it, and tell
me--tell me--it is so difficult for me to say what I wish to--you seem
so gay, so satisfied, so----" His voice broke off, for her face
changed ominously, and the strongest argument he could have adduced,
the folding of her to his heart, the silent embrace which should make
her his, was still denied him. To the outsider there might have been a
touch of humour in the situation, but not so to either person
concerned. She echoed his last words.

"Satisfied! Me! You think I am that? My God, yes, I have to say it
in English--it means more! I--satisfied! Happy--you will say next, I
suppose. Me--happy and satisfied. I'm the most miserable woman on
God's earth! I have had ideals, aspirations--but how could I fulfil,
achieve them, living in this place and with my temper, my heredity.
Look at Henry. I tell you he is mad--mad and worse! Think of having
lived with him! Think of Clairville! You do not know half of what I
have gone through!"

A dreadful thought, a dreadful question occurred to Ringfield as he
marked the dark wave of hair on Miss Clairville's brow, and again he
saw the child in the basket chair at Hawthorne, but he frantically
stifled the thought and forbore to question, and the next moment she
was weeping and pushing him towards the door.

"Go now," she sobbed. "Go before it gets darker. You might lose your
way. Go--go."

He went out at once, pulling the door after him as well as he could and
ran through the hollow till he reached the road, where it seemed
brighter. The rain gave signs of falling less steadily, when, as often
occurs after a protracted storm, there came a lull, followed by one
terrific and astounding burst and explosion of