With his pistol in readiness, Philip darted through the illuminated path.  A startled cry broke out of the night, and with that cry his hand gripped fiercely in the deep fur of a coat.  In the same breath an exclamation of astonishment came from his own lips as he looked into the white, staring face of Josephine.  His pistol arm had dropped to his side.  He believed that she had not seen the weapon, and he thrust it in his trousers pocket.

“You, Josephine!” he gasped.  “What are you doing here?”

“And you?” she counter demanded.  “You have no coat, no hat ...”  Her hands gripped his arm.  “I saw you run through the light.  You had a pistol.”

An impulse which he could not explain prompted him to tell her a falsehood.

“I came out—­to see what the night looked like,” he said.  “When I heard you in the darkness it startled me for a moment, and I drew my pistol.”

It seemed to him that her fingers clutched deeper and more convulsively into his arm.

“You have seen no one else?” she asked.

Again he was prompted to keep his secret.

“Is it possible that any one else is awake and roaming about at this hour?” he laughed.  “I was just returning to my room to go to bed, Josephine.  I thought that you had forgotten me.  And Jean—­ where is he?”

“We hadn’t forgotten you,” shivered Josephine.  “But unexpected things have happened since we came to Adare House to-night.  I was on my way to you.  And Jean is back in the forest.  Listen!”

From perhaps half a mile away there came the howl of a dog, and scarcely had that sound died away when there followed it the full-throated voice of the pack whose silence Philip had wondered at.  A strange cry broke from Josephine.

“They are coming!” she almost sobbed.  “Quick, Philip!  My last hope of saving you is gone, and now you must be good to me—­if you care at all!” She seized him by the hand and half ran with him to the door through which they had entered a short time before.  In the great room she threw off her hood and the long fur cape that covered her, and then Philip saw that she had not dressed for the night and the storm.  She had on a thin, shimmering dress of white, and her hair was coiled in loose golden masses about her head.  On her breast, just below her white, bare throat, she wore a single red rose.  It did not seem remarkable that she should be wearing a rose.  To him the wonderful thing was that the rose, the clinging beauty of her dress, the glowing softness of her hair had been for him, and that something unexpected had taken her out into the night.  Before he could speak she led him swiftly through the hall beyond, and did not pause until they had entered through another door and stood in the room which he knew was her room.  In a glance he took in its exquisite femininity.  Here, too, the bed was set behind curtains, and the curtains were closely drawn.

She had faced him now, standing a few steps away.  She was deathly white, but her eyes had never met his more unflinchingly or more beautiful.  Something in her attitude restrained him from approaching nearer.  He looked at her, and waited.  When she spoke her voice was low and calm.  He knew that at last she had come to the hour of her greatest fight, and in that moment he was more unnerved than she.