But the running feet came nearer and nearer.  She suddenly realized that they meant to overtake her, and with the knowledge the old quick dread pierced her heart.  She wheeled abruptly round and stood still.

He was there, not a dozen yards from her.  He hailed her as she turned.

She clenched her hands with sudden determination and went to meet him.

“Piers!” she said, and in her voice reproach and severity were oddly mingled.

But Piers was unabashed.  He ran swiftly up to her, and caught her hands into his with an impetuous rush of words.  “Here you are at last!  I’ve been waiting for you for hours.  But I was in the water when you first appeared, and I hadn’t any towels, or I should have caught you up before.”

He was laughing as he spoke, but it seemed to Avery that there was something not quite normal about him.  His black hair lay in a wet plaster on his forehead, and below it his eyes glittered oddly, as if he were putting some force upon himself.

“How in the world did you get here?” she said.

He laughed again between his teeth.  “I tell you, I’ve been here for hours.  I came last night.  But I couldn’t knock you up at two in the morning.  So I had to wait.  How are you and Jeanie getting on?”

Avery gravely withdrew her hands, and turned to pursue her way towards her rocky resting-place.  “Jeanie is better,” she said, in a voice that did not encourage any further solicitude on either Jeanie’s behalf or her own.

Piers marched beside her, a certain doggedness in his gait.  The laughter had died out of his face.  He looked pale and stern, and fully as determined as she.

“Why didn’t you tell us to expect you?” Avery asked at last.

“Were you not expecting me?” he returned, and his voice had the sharpness of a challenge.

She looked at him steadily for a moment or two, meeting eyes that flung back her scrutiny with grim defiance.

“Of course I was not expecting you,” she said.

“And yet you were not—­altogether—­surprised to see me,” he rejoined, a faint jeering echo in his voice.

Avery walked on till she reached her sheltered corner.  Then she laid her work-bag down in the accustomed place, and very resolutely turned and faced him.

“Tell me why you have come!” she said.

He gazed at her for a moment fiercely from under his black brows; then suddenly and disconcertingly he seized her by the wrists.

“I’ll tell you,” he said, speaking rapidly, with feverish utterance.  “I’ve come because—­before Heaven—­I can’t keep away.  Avery, listen to me!  Yes, you must listen.  I’ve come because I must, because you are all the world to me and I want you unutterably.  I don’t believe—­I can’t believe—­that I am nothing to you.  You can’t with honesty tell me so.  I love you with all my soul, with all there is of me, good and bad.  Avery—­Avery, say you love me too!”