In the afternoon a day later, Leila, making her escape from her aunt’s busy collections, slipped away into the woods alone.  The solitude of the early woodland days of summer were what she needed, and the chance they gave for such tranquil reflection as the disturbance and restless state of her home just now made it rarely possible to secure.  She tried to put aside her increasing anxiety about her uncle and had more difficulty in dealing with John Penhallow and his over-quiet friendliness.  She thought too of her own coldly-worded letters and of the suffering of which she had been kept so long ignorant.  He had loved her once; did he now?  She was annoyed to hear the voice of Mark Rivers.

“So, Leila, you have run away, and I do not wonder.  This turmoil is most distressing.”

“Yes, yes—­and everything—­those years of war and what it has brought us—­and my dear Uncle Jim—­and how is it to end?  Let us talk of something else.  I came here to be—­well, to see if I could find peace of soul and what these silent forests have often given me, strength to take up again the cares and troubles of life.”  He did not excuse his intrusion nor seem to notice the obvious suggestions, but fell upon their personal application to himself.

“They have never done that for me,” he said sadly.  “There is some defect in my nature—­some want.  I have no such relation to nature; it is speechless to me—­mute, and I never needed more what I fail to find in myself.  The war and its duties gave me the only entire happiness I have had for years.”  Then he added, in a curiously contemplative manner, “It does seem as if a man had a right to some undisturbed happiness in life.  I must go.  I leave you to the quiet of the woods.”

“I am sorry,” she said, “I am sorry that you are able to imply that you have never known happiness.  Surely you cannot mean that.”  It was all she could say.  His look of profound melancholy hurt her, for like all who knew Mark Rivers well, she loved, respected and admired him.

He made no explanatory reply, but after a brief silence said, “I must go, Leila, where there are both duties and dangers—­not—­no, not in cities.”

“I trust you do not mean to leave us—­surely not!”

“No, not yet—­not while I can be of use to these dear friends.”

As she moved on at his side or before him, he saw too well the easy grace of her strong young virgin form, the great blue eyes, the expressive tenderness of features which told of dumb sympathy with what she had no knowledge to understand.  He longed to say, “I love you and am condemned by my conscience to ask no return.”  It would only add to his unhappiness and disturb a relation which even in its incompleteness was dear to him.  The human yearning to confess, to win even the sad luxury of pity beset the man.  In his constant habit of introspection, he had become unobservant and had no least idea that the two young people he loved so well were nearing what was to him forever impossible.