Philip felt that he was trembling.  In Miriam’s face he had seen something that had made his heart beat faster.  Quietly he went to the corridor, turned, and made his way cautiously to the door of Adare’s room.  It was dark inside, the corridor was black.  Hidden in the gloom he listened.  He heard Miriam sink in one of the big chairs, and from her movement, and the sound of her sobbing, he knew that she had buried her head in her arms on the table.  He listened for minutes to the grief that seemed racking her soul.  Then there was silence.  A moment later he heard her, and she was so close to the door that he dared not move.  She passed him, and turned into the main hall.  He followed again.

She paused only for an instant at the door of the room in which she and her husband slept.  Then she passed on, and scarcely believing his eyes Philip saw her open the door that led out into the night!

She was full in the glow of the lamp that hung over the door now, and Philip saw her plainly.  A biting gust of wind flung back her hair.  He saw her bare arms; she turned, and he caught the white gleam of a naked shoulder.  Before he could speak—­before he could call her name, she had darted out into the night!

With a gasp of amazement he sprang after her.  Her bare feet were deep in the snow when he caught her.  A frightened cry broke from her lips.  He picked her up in his arms as if she had been a child, and ran back into the hall with her, closing the door after them.  Panting, shivering with the cold, she stared at him without speaking.

“Why were you going out there?” he whispered.  “Why—­like that?”

For a moment he was afraid that from her heaving bosom and quivering lips would burst forth the strange excitement which she was fighting back.  Something told him that Adare must not discover them in the hall.  He caught her hands.  They were cold as ice.

“Go to your room,” he whispered gently.  “You must not let him know you were out there in the snow—­like this.  You—­were partly asleep.”

Purposely he gave her the chance to seize upon this explanation.  The sobbing breath came to her lips again.

“I guess—­it must have been—­that,” she said, drawing her hands from him.  “I was going out—­to—­the baby.  Thank you, Philip.  I—­I will go to my room now.”

She left him, and not until her door had closed behind her did he move.  Had she spoken the truth?  Had she in those few moments been temporarily irresponsible because of grieving over the baby’s death?  Some inner consciousness answered him in the negative.  It was not that.  And yet—­what more could there be?  He remembered.  Jean’s words, his insistent warnings.  Resolutely he moved toward Josephine’s room, and knocked softly upon her door.  He was surprised at the promptness with which her voice answered.  When he spoke his name, and told her it was important for him to see her, she opened the door.  She had unbound her hair.  But she was still dressed, and Philip knew that she had been sitting alone in the darkness of her room.