Minute by minute, the hours passed.  Miss Evelina’s heart was beating painfully, but, all unknowingly, she had entered upon a new phase.  She had turned in the winding sheet of her own weaving, and her hands were clutching at the binding fabric.

At last, the train came in.  It did not stop, but thundered through the sleeping village, shrieking as it went.  The sound died into a distant rumble, then merged into the stillness of the night.  Miss Evelina rose from her chair, put on her wraps, slipped the jewel case into her bag, and went out, closely veiled.

The light of the waning moon was dim and, veiled as she was, she felt rather than saw the way.  Steadfastly, she went down the steep road, avoiding the sidewalk, for she remembered that Miss Mehitable’s ears were keen.  Past the crossroads, to the right, down into the village, across the tracks, then sharply to the left—­the way was the same, but the wayfarer was sadly changed.

She went unemotionally, seeing herself a divinely appointed instrument of vengeance.  Something outside her obsession had its clutch upon her also, but it was new, and she did not guess that it was fully as hideous.

Doctor Dexter’s house was near the corner on a shaded street.  At the gate.  Miss Evelina paused and, with her veil lifted, carefully scrutinised the house for a possible light.  She feared that some one might be stirring, late as it was, but the old housekeeper always went to bed promptly at nine, and on this particular night, Anthony Dexter had gone to his room at ten, making sleep sure by a drug.

With hushed steps, Miss Evelina went furtively up to the house on the bare earth beside the brick pavement.  She was in a panic of fear, but something beyond her control urged her on.  Reaching the steps, she hesitated, baffled for the moment, then sank to her knees.  Slowly she crept to the threshold, placed the jewel case so that it would fall inward when the door was opened, and started back.  Instinct bade her hurry, but reason made her cautious.  She forced herself to walk slowly and to muffle the latch of the gate with her skirts as she had done when she came in.

It seemed an hour before she crossed the tracks again, at the deserted point she had chosen, but, in reality, it was only a few minutes.  At last she reached home, utterly exhausted by the strain she had put upon herself.  She had seen no one, heard no footstep save her own; she had gone and returned as mysteriously as the night itself.

When she slept, she dreamed of the poppy bed on the western slope of the garden.  It was twilight, and she stood there with a vial of laudanum in one hand and a necklace of discoloured pearls in the other.  She poured the laudanum upon the earth and a great black poppy with a deadly fragrance sprang up at her feet.  Then Anthony Dexter drove up in a carriage and took the pearls away from her.  She could not see him clearly, because his face was veiled, like her own.