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She slipped through the dark boughs like a moonbeam and stood by the stone. Again he saw her quite plainly–saw and drank her in with his eyes. He did not feel surprise–something in him had known she would come again. He would not move a muscle lest he lose her as he had lost her before. They looked at each other–for how long? He did not know; and then–a horrible thing happened. Into that place of wonder and revelation and mystery reeled a hiccoughing, laughing creature, a drunken sailor from a harbour ship, with a leering face and desecrating breath.

“Oh, you’re here, my dear–I thought I’d catch you yet,” he said.

He caught hold of her. She screamed. Roger sprang forward and struck him in the face. In his fury of sudden rage the strength of ten seemed to animate his slender body and pass into his blow. The sailor reeled back and put up his hands. He was a coward–and even a brave man might have been daunted by that terrible white face and those blazing eyes. He backed down the path.

“Shorry–shorry,” he muttered. “Didn’t know she was your girl–shorry I butted in. Shentlemans never butt in–shorry–shir–shorry.”

He kept repeating his ridiculous “shorry” until he was out of the grove. Then he turned and ran stumblingly across the field. Roger did not follow; he went back to Isabel Temple’s grave. The girl was lying across it; he thought she was unconscious. He stooped and picked her up–she was light and small, but she was warm flesh and blood; she clung uncertainly to him for a moment and he felt her breath on his face. He did not speak–he was too sick at heart. She did not speak either. He did not think this strange until afterwards. He was incapable of thinking just then; he was dazed, wretched, lost. Presently he became aware that she was timidly pulling his arm. It seemed that she wanted him to go with her–she was evidently frightened of that brute–he must take her to safety. And then–

She moved on down the little path and he followed. Out in the moonlit field he saw her clearly. With her drooping head, her flowing dark hair, her great brown eyes, she looked like the nymph of a wood-brook, a haunter of shadows, a creature sprung from the wild. But she was mortal maid, and he–what a fool he had been! Presently he would laugh at himself, when this dazed agony should clear away from his brain. He followed her down the long field to the bay shore. Now and then she paused and looked back to see if he were coming, but she never spoke. When she reached the shore road she turned and went along it until they came to an old grey house fronting the calm grey harbour. At its gate she paused. Roger knew now who she was. Catherine had told him about her a month ago.

She was Lilith Barr, a girl of eighteen, who had come to live with her uncle and aunt. Her father had died some months before. She was absolutely deaf as the result of some accident in childhood, and she was, as his own eyes told him, exquisitely lovely in her white, haunting style. But she was not Isabel Temple; he had tricked himself–he had lived in a fool’s paradise–oh, he must get away and laugh at himself. He left her at her gate, disregarding the little hand she put timidly out–but he did not laugh at himself. He went back to Isabel Temple’s grave and flung himself down on it and cried like a boy. He wept his stormy, anguished soul out on it; and when he rose and went away, he believed it was forever. He thought he could never, never go there again.

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