At eleven o’clock Emily came forth.  A savage delight seized him as he watched her cross the patch of garden.  At the gate she hesitated a moment, then took the way neither to the Heath nor to Dunfield, but crossed to the lane which led to Pendal.  From his hiding-place Dagworthy could follow her so far, and with ecstasy he told himself that she must be going to the Castle Hill.  She carried a book in her hand.

At length he moved.  His limbs had stiffened; it was with difficulty that he climbed to the top of the embankment.  Thence he could see the whole track of the lane, which went, indeed, almost parallel with the railway line.  He walked in the same direction, keeping at some distance behind Emily.  Before reaching the village of Pendal, he had to cross a field, and enter the lane itself.  There was now the danger that the girl might look back.  But she did not.  She was reading as she walked, and continued to do so the whole way to the stile which led into the Castle Hill.  But now it mattered little if she turned her head.

He let her pass the stile, and himself paused before following.  He was agitated; that which he was about to do seemed harder than he had imagined; he had a horrible fear lest his resolution might fail at the last moment.  The brute in him for an instant almost slept.  The woman in the field yonder was not only the object of his vehement desire; all the nobler possibilities of his nature united to worship her, as the highest and holiest he knew.  In his heart was a subtle temptation, the voice of very love bidding him cast himself at her feet and sue but for the grace of so much human kindness as would make life without her endurable.  He remembered the self-abasement which had come upon him when he tried to tell her of his love; the offering had seemed so gross, so unworthy to be brought before her.  Would it not be the same now?  He dreaded her power to protect herself, the secret might of purity which made him shrink at her steady gaze.  But he had gone through much in the last fortnight the brute forces had grown strong by habit of self-assertion.  He looked up, and the fact that Emily had gone from his sight stung him into pursuit.

She was sitting where she had sat with Wilfrid, on the fallen tree; the book lay at her side, and she was giving herself to memory.  Treading on the grass, he did not attract her attention till he almost stood before her; then she looked at him, and at once rose.  He expected signs of apprehension or embarrassment, but she seemed calm.  She had accustomed herself to think of him, and could no longer be taken by surprise.  She was self-possessed, too, in the strength of the thoughts which he had disturbed.

He fed his eyes upon her, and kept so long silent that Emily’s cheek coloured, and she half turned away.  Then he spoke abruptly, yet with humility, which the consciousness of his purpose could not overcome.

’You know that I have been away since I saw you last.  I tried to put you out of my mind.  I couldn’t do it, and I am driven back to you.’