Far from him as she was, Marise could hear, through the forest hush, the terrible sound of his breathing as he ran, as he stumbled, as he struggled to his feet, fighting crazily with the thick undergrowth.  Those loud hoarse gasps . . . it was as though he were being choked to death by a hand on his throat.

He was gone, down the slope towards the valley road.  The leaves closed together behind him.  The forest was impenetrably silent again.  Marise knew who he was, then, recognized him for ’Gene Powers beyond any doubt.

She felt a strange mixture of pity and scorn and envy.  To be so primitive as that . . . to think, even for an instant’s madness, that you could run away on your own two poor human feet from whatever life brought to you!

* * * * *

She herself was hurrying forward again.  What was she going to?  What had she left behind?  The passage of the other runner had not taken a single moment’s time.  She was now at the path which led to Cousin Hetty’s side-door.

She darted along this, and found herself in the yard before the door, open as Agnes had left it when she rushed out for help.

A tea-kettle on the kitchen-stove sang in a low murmur.  The clock ticked loudly, wagging its pendulum back and forth.  The cat, stretched at full length on the floor in a yellow square of sunlight, lifted a drowsy head and looked at her.  There was a smell of freshly made coffee in the air.  As she stood there for an instant till the whirling in her head should stop, a stick of wood in the fire broke and fell together.

Marise went through into the dining-room where the table laid for breakfast stood in a quiet expectancy.  The old house, well-kept and well-loved, wore a tranquil expression of permanence and security.

But out in the dusky hail, the white stairs stood palely motioning up.  There Marise felt a singular heavy coolness in the stagnant air.  She went up the stairs, leaning on the balustrade, and found herself facing an open door.

Beyond it, in a shuttered and shaded room, stood a still white bed.  And on the bed, still and white and distant, lay something dead.  It was not Cousin Hetty.  That austere, cold face, proud and stern, was not Cousin Hetty’s.  It was her grandmother’s, her father’s, her uncle’s face, whom Cousin Hetty had never at all resembled.  It was the family shell which Cousin Hetty had for a time inhabited.

Marise came forward and crossed the threshold.  Immediately she was aware of a palpable change in the atmosphere.  The room was densely filled with silence, which folded her about coldly.  She sank down on a chair.  She sat motionless, looking at what lay there so quiet, at the unimaginable emptiness and remoteness of that human countenance.

This was the end.  She had come to the end of her running and her haste and her effort to help.  All the paltry agitations and sorrows, the strains and defeats and poor joys, they were all hurrying forward to meet this end.