Where was he now—­this hour—­this moment—­where was he now?  Did he know the rain, the greyness, the desolation of the world?

Once she stopped her horse on the loneliness of the marsh land, and looked up at the low clouds about her, at the creeping mist, the dank grass.  It seemed a place in which a newly-released soul might wander because it did not yet know its way.

“If you should be near, and come to me, you will understand,” her clear voice said gravely between the caught breaths, “what I gave you was nothing to you—­but you took it with you.  Perhaps you know without my telling you.  I want you to know.  When a man is dead, everything melts away.  I loved you.  I wish you had loved me.”

CHAPTER XLVIII

THE MOMENT

In the unnatural unbearableness of her anguish, she lost sight of objects as she passed them, she lost all memory of what she did.  She did not know how long she had been out, or how far she had ridden.  When the thought of time or distance vaguely flitted across her mind, it seemed that she had been riding for hours, and might have crossed one county and entered another.  She had long left familiar places behind.  Riding through and inclosed by the mist, she, herself, might have been a wandering ghost, lost in unknown places.  Where was he now—­where was he now?

Afterwards she could not tell how or when it was that she found herself becoming conscious of the evidences that her horse had been ridden too long and hard, and that he was worn out with fatigue.  She did not know that she had ridden round and round over the marshes, and had passed several times through the same lanes.  Childe Harold, the sure of foot, actually stumbled, out of sheer weariness of limb.  Perhaps it was this which brought her back to earth, and led her to look around her with eyes which saw material objects with comprehension.  She had reached the lonely places, indeed and the evening was drawing on.  She was at the edge of the marsh, and the land about her was strange to her and desolate.  At the side of a steep lane, overgrown with grass, and seeming a mere cart-path, stood a deserted-looking, black and white, timbered cottage, which was half a ruin.  Close to it was a dripping spinney, its trees forming a darkling background to the tumble-down house, whose thatch was rotting into holes, and its walls sagging forward perilously.  The bit of garden about it was neglected and untidy, here and there windows were broken, and stuffed with pieces of ragged garments.  Altogether a sinister and repellent place enough.