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way across the planks and she must run no danger of not reaching her friend. The road lay, the colour of the sky, between the darker hedges, and it seemed to unroll itself before her and to lead her on into the obscurity, and it was restful to walk like this, swiftly, unhesitatingly, in the darkness, as if led on. She could not remember that she had ever walked, late at night, in the country, alone, before. It was an adventure, and as she had smiled slightly on thinking of doffed scruples, so she smiled now, contrasting the adventures of her life with those of Ingpen’s life; adventures to which his personal involvements had, perhaps, been only a background; and again vaguely remembered names and images moved before her mind as she went along the drowsy English road:—dark, menacing faces; fertile valleys, unknown perhaps, to European eyes till his had seen them; and she saw pallid stretches of plain, bleached by the sun; and rocks with inky shadows rising against a torrid sky; and peril everywhere. How far away; how remote, how unreal to her; yet upon such images the web of his consciousness was stretched.

Now the Manor Farm woods stole gently towards her, so tame, so diminished by the darkness that they made her think of a tabby-cat reconnoi-