With my hand on my wheel I moved a few steps towards the middle of the road.  I was about to take off my cap when she turned her eyes upon me.  She even moved her head a little so as to gaze upon me a few seconds longer.  Her face was quiet and serene, her eyes were large, clear, and observant.  In them was not one gleam of recognition.  Turning them again upon the road in front of her, she sped on and away.

[Illustration:  “Cut like that”]

For some minutes I stood looking after her, utterly astonished.  I do not think in all my life I had ever been cut like that.  What did it mean?  Could she care enough about me to resent my stopping at the Holly Sprig?  Was it possible that she could have known what had been likely to happen there, and what had happened there?  All this was very improbable, but in Cathay people seemed to know a great many things.  Anyway, she had solved my problem for me.  I need give no further thought to a stop at her father’s mansion.

I mounted and rode on, but not rapidly.  I was very much moved.  My soul grew warm as I thought of the steady gaze of the eyes which that girl had fixed upon me.  For a mile or so I moved steadily and quietly in a mood of incensed dignity.  I pressed the pedals with a hard and cruel tread.  I did not understand.  I could scarcely believe.

Soon, however, I began to move a little faster.  Somehow or other I became conscious that there was a bicycle at some distance behind me.  I pushed on a little faster.  I did not wish to be overtaken by anybody.  Now I was sure there was a wheel behind me.  I could not hear it, but I knew it was there.

Presently I became certain that my instincts had not deceived me, for I heard the quick sound of a bicycle bell.  This was odd, for surely no one would ring for me to get out of the way.  Then there was another tinkle, a little nearer.

Now I sped faster and faster.  I heard the bell violently ringing.  Then I thought, but I am not sure, that I heard a voice.  I struck out with the thrust of a steam-engine, and the earth slipped backward beneath me like the water of a mill-race.  I passed wagons as if they had been puffs of smoke, and people on wheels as though they were flying cinders.

In some ten minutes I slackened speed and looked back.  For a long distance behind me not a bicycle was in sight.  I now pursued my homeward way with a warm body and a lacerated heart.  I hated this region which I had called Cathay.  Its inhabitants were not barbarians, but I was suffering from their barbarities.  I had come among them clean, whole, with an upright bearing.  I was going away torn, bloody, and downcast.

If the last words of the lady of the Holly Sprig meant the sweet thing I thought they meant, then did they make the words which preceded them all the more bitter.  The more friendly and honest the counsels of Edith Larramie had grown, the deeper they had cut into my heart.  Even the more than regard with which my soul prompted me to look back to Amy Willoughby was a pain to me.  My judgment would enrage me if it should try to compel me to feel as I did not want to feel.