I stole a covert glance at him as he walked beside me.  It seemed to me he had never been so beautiful.  But his beauty hurt me.  I felt old, very, very old, and sad, and tired.  The salt taste of tears was in my mouth.  My feet dragged.

We entered that strip of land which on a time old Sophronisba barb-wired and barricaded against her neighbors, and which touched the Jelnik grounds in the rear.  We were to cut through his garden and enter mine by the gap in the hedge behind the spring-house and I hoped to get into the house and up-stairs to my own room unperceived.

The gray cottage lay dark and silent, but there were lights in Hynds House although the night was upon the verge of morning.  A gray light, upon which was stealing a primrose tinge, was already in the sky.  It was, in fact, four o’clock.  I was so mortally tired that for a moment I sat down on his steps.

“It’s been pretty rough on you, Sophy.  One woman in a thousand could have gone through this night’s experience without going to pieces,” said Mr. Jelnik, with feeling.  And then: 

“Sophy!” cried a frightened and hysterical voice.  “Oh, is that you, at last, Sophy?” And turning a corner of the gray cottage, Alicia, Doctor Geddes, and The Author confronted us.  They were still in costume, and the Mephistophelian effect of The Author was such as would turn any actor green with envy.  Ensued a pregnant pause.  It was a lovely situation!  It reduced me, for one, to idiocy.

“Sophy!  Jelnik!” exploded Doctor Geddes, with a gesture of rage and astonishment.

“Yes.  It is I. What is the matter?  Why aren’t you home and in bed?  What are you doing here, at this hour?” I asked, stupidly.

Here The Author, all in red tights, cape, and doublet, snatched his red cap with the cock’s feather in it off his head, and bowed diabolically: 

“Let us ask you that same question:  Why aren’t you home and in bed?  What are you doing here at this hour?”

“After everybody had gone home, I ran up to your room, Sophy—­and—­and you were gone.  You weren’t in the house.  I looked everywhere; and you’d disappeared, as if the earth had opened and swallowed you.”  Alicia’s voice was trembling.

“Oh, Sophy, I was so frightened, so horribly frightened!  I kept thinking every minute you must come.  I kept looking and waiting, and still you didn’t come.  I telephoned Doctor Geddes, when I couldn’t stand it any longer.  And then The Author came down-stairs.  And oh, Sophy, there was such an unearthly, clammy, waiting sort of feeling in the house—­all those lights, all those empty rooms—­I felt as if something terrible must be happening!” She clung to me as she spoke, kissing me, and shook, and wept.  “And when you still didn’t come, and we couldn’t find you anywhere, The Author suggested that we should come over here and enlist Mr. Jelnik.

“When we got here, there wasn’t a soul in this house.  Not even the dog.  We went back to Hynds House, and walked through our garden, and then came back here, because we didn’t know what else to do.  Oh, Sophy!” I patted her shoulders, mumbling that she mustn’t cry, it was ail right.