"I won't let you go home," said the Duchess. "Barnaby can do as he
likes, but you're too tired to mind sleeping in a cupboard."
She held Susan firmly by the arm as she spoke; she had motives.
Barnaby deserved to be punished; his conduct with Julia had really been
scandalous. But a worn-out girl, a wisp of white satin, was no match
for a naughty husband. She would burst into tears and forgive him.
Let Barnaby go home by himself, feeling guilty, and brood upon his
unkindness. _She_ would tell Susan what to do to him in the morning.
With rough kindness she hustled the girl away with her, and having
collected her party, ordered them to bed.
"Because," she said, "until some of you are disposed of I can't tell
what to do with the others, and I want to know if there are beds enough
to go round."
Susan was the first to be bundled into her attic, and lay wearily
listening to a far-off commotion. When at last the household had
settled down there was a fresh disturbance, and the elder of the two
foreign maids mounted, carrying an armful of pillows.
The Duchess herself followed, to excuse the indicated invasion. She
was already in her dressing-gown. The maid set up a chair bed that had
stood, doubled up, in the corner, and was sent out of the room for a
minute.
"I've come to apologize," said the Duchess, "for pitchforking a
stranger into your room like this; but I'm sorry for the woman. You
are the only one of them I can depend on not to be horrid to her."
She looked round, measuring the space that was to be shared. "I hope,"
she said, "you won't bump into each other. The truth is, I have a
shocking custom of sticking my head out of the window when something is
going on outside; and just as I was getting into bed I heard a
tremendous buzzing. Everybody must have started. If this was
somebody's motor gone wrong, I supposed I ought to offer my
hospitality. And it was. The chauffeur was grovelling; a man I knew
was storming at him; and a woman wringing her hands on the pavement. I
knew her too, perfectly, and she had no business in that man's car."
She stopped to listen.
"I am not," she said, "a universal mender. If people I don't
particularly care about are jumping out of frying-pans, I don't preach
at them eternal fire. But this fool of a woman had chosen to bolt
under my very nose. Providence had cast her upon my doorstep. So I
took the hint. Not being a heathen I really had to."
The confidential maid was ascending with someone strange to the place,
who stumbled and chattered in halting French.
"I poked my head farther out," said the Duchess, "and shouted--'Is that
you, Lady Cummerbatch? Have you had a breakdown?' and it was worth it
to see her jump. I don't in the least know what she answered; it
sounded hysterical. 'Well,' I said, 'leave your husband to tinker up
the machine; it will probably take him hours. I can put you up.'"
"Her husband?" said Susan, puzzled.
"Tact, my child, tact! I sent Fifine down to fetch her, and kept my
eye on him. She followed Fifine into the house like a lamb."
She wrapped her dressing-gown closer round her, and prepared to depart.
"I couldn't keep her in my room," she said; "I've two girls camping on
the floor. Besides, she would begin confessing everything, and I am
certain that I should smack her. Pretend that you are asleep. If she
cries, don't notice. Good night, my child."
She patted Susan on the head, looking as if she would have kissed her,
but not being accustomed to caresses, did not quite know how.
Then she wheeled round to receive the late visitor, holding up her
finger, and crying--"Hush!" very loud.
Susan lay with her face turned from the light and her eyes shut, as she
had been bidden. She heard Fifine, after some careful whispering,
close the door and make her way down; she heard a smothered sobbing
from the improvised bed that almost blocked the chamber;--and then she
heard a stealthy noise in the room, and opened her eyes. On the wall
she could see the shadow of a person struggling into her clothes, and
evidently about to fly. Some instinct made the girl spring up and
fling herself against the door.
"Oh! Oh!" said the strange woman, tottering. "Let me out!"
Susan looked her in the face.
"If you want to go," she said, "I will call the Duchess."
The stranger began to cry. She was thin and fair, with a faded skin
and unhappy eyes, outstared by a blaze of jewels. Susan remembered
seeing her at the ball. Kilgour had called her the Shop Window.
"He's waiting for me. I must go with him," she cried, worked up to a
pitch of agitation that deprived her of self-control.
"You shall not," the girl said.
They both heard an engine vibrating far down below. The woman flew to
the window. And then the Duchess's strident voice struck into the
night from her own window underneath.
"So glad the motor is working. Don't trouble about your wife, Sir
Richard. She's safely tucked up in bed."
Then a furious backing and grinding, as the car started and rushed away
into the darkness, baulked of a passenger.
Susan retired sedately into bed, since it was no longer necessary to
guard the door. The woman began to strip off her jewels, that she had
put on again, anyhow,--flinging them in a heap on the table.
"Absurd, isn't it?" she said, in a high, unnatural key, "wearing all
these.... but I wasn't going to leave them behind."
The girl said nothing; she was embarrassed.
"The Duchess took him for Dicky," the prisoner rambled on. Perhaps she
was afraid of silence. "_You_ guessed the truth. I saw you at the
ball to-night. They were all talking about you, and I liked your
diamonds. Did _your_ husband marry you for your money?"
Susan drew a sharp breath. Ah, this woman was more to be pitied than
she, who had brought sorrow upon herself.
"Oh, you poor thing!" she said softly, sitting up in bed and clasping
her hands round her knees.
Lady Cummerbatch was one of those lucky women who find solace in
lamentation. They are the fortunate ones, whose bitterness of heart
can be dissipated in bitter speech.
"I've heard," she went on, too distracted about her own plight to be
conscious of the rank impertinence of which she was being guilty.
"I've heard all about your husband. He's the wild Barnaby Hill who was
jilted by an Irishwoman and disappeared and married abroad to vex her,
and then turned up after his people thought him dead. You're an
American too, though you are not my kind. They seem fond of you here;
they all take your part;--but what difference does it make? Aren't we
two miserable women?"
She began to weep noisily, and then to shiver. Getting into bed, she
pulled her fur cloak over her shoulders, and sat hunched up, staring at
the light.
"Do you mind my not putting out the candle?" she said. "I can't bear
to lie worrying in the dark. If that auto hadn't stuck, and the
Duchess hadn't jumped me when I got out to see what was the matter, I'd
have been out of my misery.... I said to Sir Richard once--'You
married me for my money,' and he laughed in my face and said--'My good
young woman, you had an equivalent--you married me for my title.' And
then I just screamed, 'I married you for your title! Oh, yes, I
married you for your title!' till he banged himself out of the house."
"But if that was not true----" said Susan.
"True? It was all true," she sobbed. "The pity was it didn't keep
true. When I married that man I couldn't have told you if his eyes
were grey or green. But there--! It wears off with them and it wears
on with us."
In her lamentation she continued to identify herself with her
compatriot; their common misfortune, as she conceived it, was mixed up
in her bewailing.
"Why don't you try it, like me?" she said. "Why don't you run away
from him? If you cry and stamp and bluster it makes them vain, but
when they've lost you outright they miss you.... Oh, it's awful to
live with a man and watch him getting impatient because you are in his
way and he's tied to you;--to see him looking hard at you, thinking how
could he have paid the price! He tried to be civil at first, but his
face soon taught me.... I wonder how long were you deceived?"
"I was never deceived," said Susan, hardly knowing she had uttered that
sigh aloud. Her arms were round the other woman now; a poor wretch who
had once been happy. Ah, with what pain would she not have gladly
purchased some mirage of happiness, some illusion that she was his ...
and beloved ... for half an hour!
The haggard butterfly who had been cursed with riches dropped her voice
from its wailing tune to a whisper.
"I'm going to France to-morrow," she said. "He won't like that. It
will be the same as striking him in the face. He to turn from me to
other women who had no money to give him--! When a man sees that what
he has tossed in the gutter is precious to another man, when he sees
how the other man picks it up,--he feels cheated. It hits him harder
than if you had killed yourself. I thought of _that_ first. But don't
you do it! I knew just how he'd say--'Mad! quite mad!' and bury me and
forget me. He'll never lose sight of it if I go away like this--" and
her voice rose high--"_that_ will let him know how I hate him!"
But when her confidences had tired her out, and she loosed her clasp of
Susan, pulling up the quilt and sinking into a wearied slumber,--when
the girl lay gazing alone at a light that was burning dim;--there was a
cry in the silence.
"I've come back, Dicky! Dicky, let me in--! I've come back."
It was the woman who hated her husband, calling to him in her sleep.
* * * * *
Susan awakened in the morning with music in her ears. Dreaming, she
danced with Barnaby, and his arm was round her, his breath quick on her
cheek, his face not ... kind.
And as the wild illumination of a dream sometimes teaches what a
stumbling consciousness dare not know, so the girl awoke trembling.
But that dream of all dreams was madness.
Into her waking mind came the thought of Rackham, the man who had said
he loved her. Had she not always been ill at ease with him, and what
was that but a warning instinct, divining, shrinking from the peril in
a man's admiration? But Barnaby and she had been such good comrades....
Quaint incidents crowded on her, scenes in the hunting field, Sunday
afternoons at the stables,--the day he had cut his finger and she had
run to him to bind it up;--the day he had told her the brim of her
riding hat was too narrow, and made her try on another that satisfied
his inspection.... Oh, they had honourably tried not to haunt each
other, but all the same.... Dear and safe memories; they blotted out
last night.
She raised herself on her elbow and looked across the room at the
runaway.
So a woman could sleep whom the casual kindness of an acquaintance had
saved from shipwreck; so a woman could sleep who had poured out her
soul to a stranger.
Someone was tapping at the door. It was late. Ten, eleven, ah, quite
that; and Monsieur had come for Madame and brought her clothes. And
Miladi said Madame was to dress in her room, as one was so cramped up
here.
The maid waited discreetly at the door, her sharp, foreign eyes taking
in everything, the other woman huddled up in bed, her clothes flung all
over the floor, her gems scattered recklessly on the table.
Susan slipped on the dressing-gown that had been brought her, and was
following, Fifine going down in front as a picket, to see that the
coast was clear; when she heard her neighbour calling. Lady
Cummerbatch was sitting up in bed.
"I made a fool of myself last night, didn't I?" she said. "Why didn't
you smother me with my pillow? Don't be afraid, I'm as wise as an old
hen this morning." She pulled the girl close enough to kiss. "You are
a dear; you are a dear!" she cried.
Stretching out her arm to the dressing-table, she caught up something
from its disordered glitter, squeezing it into Susan's hand.
"Keep it," she said. "I know you've heaps of your own. I saw them
last night. But I want you to have something to remember me by. I can
do nothing for anybody but give them things.... Do! Please me! I'd
have thrown myself out of that window if you hadn't been kind to me."
The girl looked doubtfully at the diamond star that had been thrust
upon her.
"If you don't care to wear anything I've worn," said the woman, "put it
by. Who knows? Some day you may be glad to have it. If it does come
from a worthless creature, it's fit to sell. I've heard of rich women
whose husbands ruined them, and who had to pawn their jewels.... How
do we know what will happen to you and me?"
Susan went down the irregular flight of stairs. The Duchess was
waiting in her room for a word.
"Good morning, my child," she said. "Your husband has very properly
come to fetch you. I should advise you to let him off lightly about
last night."
The maid had gone out of the room.
"About----?" faltered Susan.
"Philandering with Julia. I believe in severity, of course," said the
Duchess bluntly, "but as a matter of fact Kitty and I have been at him
like early birds. Told him what we thought of him, and so forth.
Don't look so sorry. It's done him good, and you can descend upon him
like a forgiving saint."
"I have nothing to forgive him," the girl protested. "Oh, I wish you
would not say that."
The Duchess smiled benevolently at her stammering haste. She fancied
she understood.
"I quite forgot," she said, "to ask after that idiot upstairs.
_There's_ a woman who tried to enrage her husband into paying her more
attention by making herself conspicuous with another man. Bad policy,
my child. It makes the man think less of her, though it may alarm his
possessive instinct;--and, of course, if anybody stole your old coat
you'd feel inclined to knock him down:--but that wouldn't make you
believe it was as good as new. No, no, it's a fallacious notion.
However, we're talking of this person. I'd be sorry for her feelings
if I didn't think the shock of being stopped on the brink would bring
her to her senses. We are very good-natured among ourselves, but _she_
wouldn't find it easy to live it down. She isn't one of us."
She smiled encouragingly at the girl, who was wrapped in her own
dressing-gown, a thick masculine garment that sat oddly on her slimness.
"People think," she said, "that we hunting people are a lawless band.
They think they can come and do as they like in Melton. Just because
we have a sporting sense of loyalty to each other, and stick to our
friends when they need us. If you or Barnaby, for example, did
anything outrageous, we'd scold you a little and let it drop. But we
don't do it with an outsider.... He's brought your habit. Get into
your things, my dear."
Barnaby nodded to her cheerfully as she came into the breakfast room.
He was sitting on the window seat, and the rest of them were at
breakfast. Whether or no they had been attacking him, he did not look
cast down.
"Well, how are you?" he said. "Good girl, you are coming hunting. I
brought everything, didn't I? They nearly left out your boots."
"Look out and see who that is passing," said the Duchess. Someone was
cracking a whip below. He flung up the window, and she came round
herself.
"What's the matter?" she said. "Is it a serenade, or do you want some
coffee?"
A man with a long nose and a grizzling moustache had halted on his way
up the street. Two or three others had left him and were trotting on.
"Have you heard the latest?" he said. "Richard Cummerbatch is drawing
all the covers like a raging maniac, roaring for his wife. Her party
went back in two cars from the ball last night, and each lot thought
she had gone in the other. It appears she's bolted."
"Upon my word," said the Duchess, "if you are going to shout scandal at
the top of your voice I shall have to put up my shutters. She is just
over your head, Major. She had nowhere to go, since her party went off
without her; so I took her in."
"Hey? What?" he said, looking up as quickly as if the lady were a
chimney-pot that might fall on him. "--Keep still, horse! You don't
say so?"
His face was blank for an instant, but he soon recovered from his
disappointment. His well of gossip had not run dry.
Cocking his head on one side like a mischievous old bird, he began on
another tack.
"Well," he said, "if you're so rough on scandal, you'll have to keep
our friend Barnaby in order. What does his poor little American wife
say to his goings-on?"
There was an awful pause in the room above.
"Susan," said Barnaby, "he's as deaf as a post. Put your head out and
tell him as loud as you can what you think of me."
Somebody began to laugh; the rest followed; and there was no more
awkwardness; his presence of mind had saved the situation. As he
leaned out of the window with his hand on Susan's shoulder the Major's
face was a study. Incontinently he fled.
"There!" said Barnaby, "we have routed the enemy. Let's get on our
horses and pursue him. Hullo, who are these? A whole tribe without
one sound horse among them."
The Duchess started back.
"Don't tell me it is my friend Wickes," she said. "I promised him
weeks ago I'd beat up a little talent for his concert to-night, and I
have never done it. For heaven's sake, somebody, volunteer! Is there
a woman here who can sing in tune?"
"Do you sing, Susan?" said Barnaby.
"Oh, the man's affectation! Does she or does she not?"
She did not know what impelled her. Perhaps his carelessness; his
unshaken attitude of amusement at a position that was--to him--so
absurd.
"I could act something, perhaps," she said. The Duchess jumped at her
offer.
"Booked!" she declared. "Stop that man clattering past, and tell him I
want him to sing _John Peel_. And, Cherry, you'll do for a comic song.
You're men, and it doesn't matter about your voices, so long as you
wear red coats."
The young man she was ordering pushed away his cup with an injured air.
A murmur of--"Delighted, I'm sure. Delighted!" floated up from the
street.
"You know I have only one song," he said, "and that is--_The Broken
Heart_."
"Well," she said unfeelingly, "you can make it comic."
"Are you coming?" said Barnaby. He was waiting; some of them had
already started. The girl caught up her gloves and whip.
"Good-bye, all of you," said the Duchess. "I beg you'll remember your
obligations. Barnaby, the thing is at eight. Call down to _John Peel_
and tell him.... Whatever you do, don't let my performer come to any
harm."
"I will not quit her side for a moment," he promised, and the Duchess
shook her head at him as they ran downstairs.
He was laughing as he put her up in the saddle.
"It appears you don't know how to manage a husband," he said. "Don't
look so sorrowful. _I_ don't mind them.--And the general public is
anxious to lend a hand."
They rode soberly side by side, over the noisy cobbles, down to the low
white bridge thronged with pedestrians, threading their way amidst the
stream that was turning in at the gates farther on to the right.
"We'll keep on, shall we?" said Barnaby. "Hounds will be moving
directly, and there'll be a fearful crowd getting out of the Park."
So they held on between the lines of townsfolk and, turning upward,
fell in with a cluster of horsemen on the watch, loitering on the hill.
"Awful bore, meeting in the town like this," said one of these
peevishly. His horse was eyeing a perambulator strangely, and there
was no space for antics. "Why do the Quorn do it?"
"Oh, it pleases the multitude."
There was a roar down below, and a scuffling noise as of hundreds
running. Above the bobbing heads passed a glimpse of scarlet, as a
whip issued from the green gates, clearing a way for hounds that were
hidden from view in the middle of the throng. Barnaby turned his horse
round.
"Come on," he said. "We'll wait for them out of the town. I suppose
it's the customary pilgrimage? Gartree Hill."
Behind them, louder and louder, drowning the tumult, came the
quickening tramp of horses. Their own animals grew excited.
"Sit him tight!" said Barnaby. Her horse had nearly bucked into the
last lamp-post at the top of the hill. He would not wait peaceably at
the corner, so she took him a few yards farther on, straight over the
brow, where the way was not street, but road, looking down upon open
country.
"Hullo!" said Barnaby.
The fields that spread underneath were bare and wind-swept; there was
no sign of life in them. But what was that brownish dab on the right?
Incredulously he watched it travelling up the furrow;--and, convinced,
let out a wild yell that made their own horses jump.
"It's a fox!" he said. "It's a fox. Keep your eye on him, Susan,
while I fetch them up."
He galloped back, waving his hat to hurry the startled host. The
huntsman came swiftly over the hill, and a glance assured him; he
touched his horn. In half a minute he and his hounds were scouring
over the fields, and the riders who had been at the front were jumping
out of the road.
"They've found. They are running!"
The cry was flung from lip to lip along the bewildered ranks that had
closed up in expectation of the long jog to cover. A minute more and
the crowd had burst like a scattered wave, far and wide.
Down the slope; up a rise; in and out of a lane defended by straggling
blackthorn; dipping over the skyline; the pack was gone. Only the
quickest could live with them, only the first away had a chance of
keeping up in the run. They were just a handful as they landed over a
stake-and-bound into a rolling pasture, a great rough waste where the
ridges rose up like billows, crosswise, submerging the horses that were
shortening in their stride.
"Good for the liver!" groaned Kilgour, as he rocked up and down. "But
what a sell for the crafty ones waiting on Gartree Hill!"
"They'll cut in with us at Great Dalby," said Barnaby, flinging a
glance that side. The pack hung to the left, still flying.
"Not much!" said Kilgour. "D'you suppose the fox is stopping with
Lydia Measures for a bottle of ginger beer?--What did I tell you?
There they go, wide of the village, over the Kirby lane----"
He broke off his ejaculations, pointing triumphantly with his whip,
pushing on. A man of his build could not afford to lag behind, unlike
those light-weights who could lie by and then come like a whirlwind and
make it up. He must keep plodding on. But he took no shame to diverge
suddenly to a gate. Let the young 'uns surmount that rasper.
On the high ground above a breathless horde struck in. Rumour, or the
wind, or some saving instinct had warned them; they had come at a
breakneck pace from their shivering watch elsewhere.
Susan, riding her hardest, with her chin up and rapture on her face,
laughed as she heard the frantic thudding of that pursuit.
"They've missed a bit," cried Barnaby at her shoulder. Her horse was
faster than his, but was tiring. She was glad to steady him as the
pack ran into a strip of trees.
"What a scent!" said Barnaby. "Hark at them! They're sticking to
him;--they're driving him up the Pastures!"
He swung round in his saddle, still keeping on. The rearguard, no
longer in desperation, were trooping contentedly down the road.
"They'll get left," he said. "They reckon on losing him. Silly asses,
they're lighting their cigarettes!"
Slower, but steadily, hounds were running up the wood. Their cry
increased in volume, vociferous, echoing in the trees. It sounded a
hundred times louder than in the open. And this time there was no
changing foxes; they drove him too hard. Out he went at the top, and
had no time to twist and turn in again; they were on his heels. Beyond
was a steep drop into a village, and then a long struggle, and another
drop to a ford. As the last of them were splashing through the water,
the first of them were swinging out of their saddles and turning their
horses' heads to the wind. They had run to Baggrave, and killed their
fox in the Park.
"Three cheers for Barnaby and his outlier," said Kilgour. "That was no
poultry-snatcher, but a real beetle-fed warrior. What the dickens
shall we do next?"
"Oh, get up in a tree, somebody, like Sister Anne; and rake the horizon
for second horses!"
Susan knew that voice. It was Rackham.
"Get up yourself," said Kilgour. "Your history isn't sound. _I_ don't
trust my weight on anything but a watch-tower."
Susan had turned away her face; she did not want to have to acknowledge
Rackham, although he had no shame in approaching her. Nervously she
plunged into a rapid argument with Kilgour, whose broad and comfortable
presence was a kind of buckler. But through it all she was conscious
of him, she heard his voice. He and Barnaby were arranging something
about a horse. She did not catch the drift of it, but Rackham turned
to her pointedly and asked her opinion.
"I wasn't listening," she said. His glance was penetrating; she could
not escape it, and recollection burnt in her cheek. She heard Barnaby
whistle suddenly to himself.
Hounds were moving at last, not hurrying, but drifting across the park,
searching as they went; and second horsemen were springing up out of
nowhere. Those who were lucky were changing horses. Already it was
far on in the afternoon.
"That's the worst of beginning so late," said Kilgour. "The day's gone
before you know it. And here we've been dawdling, munching.... Now
we'll just get away with the twilight after dodging backwards and
forwards for an hour or two between the Prince of Wales's and Barkby
Holt."
"Shut up, ill prophet!" said Barnaby, as they gathered close in to the
cover-side. Already there was a whimper.
But it was late before the prophesied shilly-shallying came to its
appointed end, and those who had resisted the false alarms, sticking
patiently on guard at a windy corner, saw a fox break at last. A
misleading holloa had drawn off the field; they were massing on the
other side, out of sight, out of hearing in the rising wind that
carried away with it the warning note of the horn. And hounds were
slipping out like lightning.
"Come on!" said Barnaby. This time there was no mistake.
It didn't matter that there was a rival shout behind the dense thicket.
Let those who liked it exclaim that the pack was divided, and miss a
run to hang skirmishing for ever and ever about the Holt.... They had
a fox away, and at least half the hounds were on him as he dipped the
rise and went spinning into the infinite. Just a handful of riders
they were, but high-hearted, as they turned their faces towards the dim
red line of the sinking sun.
Miles and miles they seemed to go swinging on. Behind a grey church,
round a silent village, and under a rustling wood. The wind was fresh
with the breath of twilight; its withering blast died down with that
last stinging gust of rain. And hounds were still running as swift as
shadows, flickering far and fast.
One by one the rest of them had fallen back; had steadied their
faltering horses and listened, beaten. Susan could hardly see the
fences as they came up, darker and darker against the sky. But her
horse rushed at them gallantly, and she had Barnaby to follow. Hounds
were invisible now, but near; their cry was fierce behind that clump of
trees, impenetrable but for one glimmering gap of light.
"They're running him still!" called Barnaby, plunging in.
His voice was all she wanted. She could not ask more of Heaven than
this one gallop; and all her life she would remember that she had
ridden it out with him....
They had to ride warily through the trees, feeling their way, trusting
in their horses. Here the path was deep and boggy, there water
trickled, and the boughs hung low, swishing against them as they went
by. Birds whirred restlessly in the creaking branches, and an owl flew
shrieking in front of them. When they emerged from that eerie passage
everything had grown weird and strange in the cheating dusk.
"That's the horn," said Barnaby. "He's calling them off. Doesn't it
sound unearthly?--There they are. Listen.... Listen.... They're
running him in the dark!"
Far away on the hillside a light twinkled suddenly, turning the
twilight land into darkness as the first star makes it night in the sky.
Barnaby laughed. "That was a hunt!" he said. "Hark! he's stopped
them. We'll have to find our way out of this. Why, we can't see each
other's faces.... Let's keep on a bit up this hedge-side, and perhaps
we'll get into a bridle-road."
He went first, striking into a kind of track.
"There should be a gate in the corner," he said. "Better let your
horse get his head down and smell out the rabbit-holes. We're like the
babes in the wood, aren't we? Mind that grip!--Where are you?"
The gate was there. They passed through it, and on the other side was
a sign-post. Barnaby struck a match, standing up in his stirrups to
peer at the moss-stained board.
"I'm afraid," he said, "we'll be late for that concert. Unless we can
strike Kilgour's habitation and get him to send us on. Shall we try
for it? We're--oh, never mind where we are; it's the end of the world,
anyhow. Are you tired to death?"
He turned round with the match in his fingers, and looked at her, but
it had burnt down; he dropped it, and reaching out, caught her hand,
swinging it in his as their horses stumbled on side by side.
"What a cold little hand!" he said, but his grip was warming it through
the leather....
The end of the world.... He had used the word so lightly, but it
called her back to reason. Another day was over. And perhaps
to-morrow the world might end.