In the conservatory he came upon Pagratide, likewise stalking about with restlessly roving eyes, like a hunter searching a jungle.  The foreigner paused with one foot tapping the marble rim of a small fountain, and Benton passed with a nod.

The evening went by without her reappearance, and finally the house darkened, and settled into quiet.  Benton sought the open, driven by a restlessness that obsessed and troubled him.  A fitful breeze brought down the dead leaves in swirling eddies.  The moon was under a cloud-bank when, a quarter of a mile from the house, he left the smooth lawns and plunged among the vine-clad trees and thickets that rimmed the creek.  In the darkness, he could hear the low, wild plaint with which the stream tossed itself over the rocks that cumbered its bed.

Beyond the thicket he came again to a more open space among the trees, free from underbrush, but strewn at intervals with great bowlders.  He picked his way cautiously, mindful of crevices where a broken leg or worse might be the penalty of a misstep in the darkness.  The humor seized him to sit on a great rock which dropped down twenty feet to the creek bed, and listen to the quieting music of its night song.  His eyes, grown somewhat accustomed to the darkness, had been blinded again by the match he had just struck to light a cigarette, and he walked, as it behooved him, carefully and gropingly.

“Please, sir, don’t step on me.”

Benton halted with a start and stared confusedly about him.  A ripple of low laughter came to his ears as he widened his pupils in the effort to accommodate his eyes to the murk.  Then the moon broke out once more and the place became one of silver light and dark, soft shadow-blots.  She was sitting with her back against a tree, her knees gathered between her arms, fingers interlocked.  She had thrown a long, rough cape about her, but it had fallen open, leaving visible the black gown and a spot he knew to be a red rose on her breast.

He stood looking down, and she smiled up.

“Cara!” he exclaimed.  “What are you doing here—­alone?”

“Seeking freedom,” she responded calmly.  “It’s not so good as the hobo’s fire beside the track, but it’s better than four walls.  The moon has been wonderful, Sir Gray Eyes—­as bright and dark as life; radiant a little while and hidden behind clouds a great deal.  And the wind has been whispering like a troubadour to the tree-tops.”

“And you,” he interrupted severely, dropping on the earth at her feet and propping himself on one elbow, “have been sitting in the chilling air, with your throat uncovered and probably catching cold.”

“What a matter-of-fact person it is!” she laughed.  “I didn’t appoint you my physician, you know.”

[Illustration:  “Please, sir, don’t step on me.”]

“But your coming alone out here in these woods, and so late!” he expostulated.