From above, on the upper part of the road, came the tread of horse’s feet and the murmur of wheels.  Her face paled to marble, her feet refused to move.  The heart within her stood portentously still.  With downcast eyes she stood there, petrified, motionless, like a woman carved in stone and clothed in black, veiled impenetrably in chiffon.

At a furious pace, Anthony Dexter dashed by, his face as white as her chiffon.  She had known unerringly who was coming; and had felt the searing consciousness of his single glance before, with a muttered oath, he had lashed his horse to a gallop.  This, then, was the last; there was nothing more.

The sound of the wheels died away in the distance.  He had the pearls, he had seen her, he knew that she had come back.  And still she lived.

Clear and high, like a bugle call, a strain of wild music came from the enchanted forest.  Evelina threw back her head, gasping for breath; her sluggish feet stirred forward.  Some forgotten valour of her spirit leaped to answer the summons, as a soldier, wounded unto death, turns to follow the singing trumpets that lead the charge.

Strangely soft and tender, the strain came again, less militant, less challenging.  Swiftly upon its echo breathed another, hinting of peace.  Shaken to her inmost soul by agony, she took heed of the music with the precise consciousness one gives to trifles at moments of unendurable stress.  Blindly she turned into the forest.

“What was it?” she asked herself, repeatedly, wondering that she could even hear at a time like this.  A bird?  No, there was never a bird to sing like that.  Almost it might be Pan himself with his syrinx, walking abroad on the first day of Spring.

The fancy appealed to her strongly, her swirling senses having become exquisitely acute.  “Pipes o’ Pan,” she whispered, “I will find and follow you.”  To see the face of Pan meant death, according to the old Greek legend, but death was something of which she was not afraid.

Lyric, tremulous, softly appealing, the music came again.  The bare boughs bent with their chiming crystal, and a twig fell at her feet, Sunlight starred the misty distance with pearl; shining branches swayed to meet her as she passed.

Farther in the wood, she turned, unconsciously in pursuit of that will-o’-the-wisp of sound.  Here and there out of the silence, it came to startle her; to fill her with strange forebodings which were not wholly of pain.

Some subliminal self guided her, for heart and soul were merged in a quivering ecstasy of torture which throbbed and thundered and overflowed.  “He saw me!  He saw me!  He saw me!  He knew me!  He knew me!  He knew me!” In a triple rhythm the words vibrated back and forth unceasingly, as though upon a weaver’s shuttle.

For nearly an hour she went blindly in search of the music, pausing now and then to listen intently, at times disheartened enough to turn back.  She had a mad fancy that Death was calling her, from some far height, because Anthony Dexter had passed her on the road.