she lowered the mask and reflected, not without pride, on the strength and determination that had enabled her to keep her secret.  But to reveal the truth now was a prospect altogether hateful in the eyes of Chris, and she knew the reason.  More than once had she been upon the brink of disclosure, since recent unhappy suspicions had darkened Phoebe’s life; but she had postponed the necessary step again and again, at one thought.  Her fortitude, her apathy, her stoic indifference, broke down and left her all woman before one necessity of confession; her heart stood still when she remembered that Martin Grimbal must know and judge.  His verdict she did, indeed, dread with all her soul, and his only; for him she had grown to love, and the thought of his respect and regard was precious to her.  Everybody must know, everybody or nobody.  For long she could conceive of no action clearing Will in the eyes of the wider circle who would not be content to take his word, and yet leaving herself uninvolved.  Then the solution came.  She would depart once more with the child.  Such a flight was implicit confession, and could not be misunderstood.  Martin must, indeed, know, but she would never see him after he knew.  To face him after the truth had reached his ear seemed to Chris a circumstance too terrible to dwell upon.  Her action, of course, would proclaim the parentage of Timothy, and free Will from further slanderings; while for herself, through tears she saw the kind faces of the gypsy people and her life henceforth devoted to her little one.

To accentuate the significance of the act she determined to carry out her intention that same day, and during the afternoon opportunity offered.  Her son, playing alone in the farmyard, came readily enough for a walk, and before three o’clock they had set out.  The boy’s face was badly scratched from his morning battle, but pain had ceased, and his injuries only served as an object of great interest to Timothy.  Where water in ditch or puddle made a looking-glass he would stop to survey himself.

A spectator, aware of certain facts, had viewed the progress of Chris with some slight interest.  Three ways were open to her, three main thoroughfares leading out of Chagford to places of parallel or greater importance.  Upon the Moor road Will wandered in deep perturbation; on that to Okehampton walked another man, concerned with the same problem from a different aspect; the third highway led to Moreton; and thither Chris might have proceeded unchallenged.  But a little public vehicle would be returning just then from the railway station.  That the runaway knew, and therefore selected another path.

In her pocket was all the money that she had; in her heart was a sort of alloyed sorrow.  Two thoughts shared her mind after she had decided upon a course of action.  She wondered how quickly Tim would learn to call her “mother,” for that was the only sweet word life still held; yet of the child’s father she did not think, for her mind, without special act of volition, turned and turned again to him upon whom the Indian summer of her love had descended.