Because minutes seemed hours, she thought he was gone long, but he was not away for twenty minutes.  He had, in fact, gone into the bare front room again, and sitting upon the box near the hearth, let his head drop in his hands and remained in this position thinking.  In the end he got up and went out to the shed where he had left the horses.

Betty was feeling that before long she might find herself making that strange swoop into the darkness of space again, and that it did not matter much, as one apparently lay quite still when one was unconscious—­when she heard that one horse was being led out into the lane.  What did that mean?  Had he got tired of the chase—­as the other man did—­and was he going away because discomfort and fatigue had cooled and disgusted him—­perhaps even made him feel that he was playing the part of a sensational idiot who was laying himself open to derision?  That would be like him, too.

Presently she heard his footsteps once more, but he did not come as near her as before—­in fact, he stood at some yards’ distance when he stopped and spoke—­in quite a new manner.

“Betty,” his tone was even cynically cool, “I shall stalk you no more.  The chase is at an end.  I think I have taken all out of you I intended to.  Perhaps it was a bad joke and was carried too far.  I wanted to prove to you that there were circumstances which might be too much even for a young woman from New York.  I have done it.  Do you suppose I am such a fool as to bring myself within reach of the law?  I am going away and will send assistance to you from the next house I pass.  I have left some matches and a few broken sticks on the hearth in the cottage.  Be a sensible girl.  Limp in there and build yourself a fire as soon as you hear me gallop away.  You must be chilled through.  Now I am going.”

He tramped across the bit of garden, down the brick path, mounted his horse and put it to a gallop at once.  Clack, clack, clack—­clacking fainter and fainter into the distance—­and he was gone.

When she realised that the thing was true, the effect upon her of her sense of relief was that the growing likelihood of a second swoop into darkness died away, but one curious sob lifted her chest as she leaned back against the rough growth behind her.  As she changed her position for a better one she felt the jagged pain again and knew that in the tenseness of her terror she had actually for some time felt next to nothing of her hurt.  She had not even been cold, for the hedge behind and over her and the barricade before had protected her from both wind and rain.  The grass beneath her was not damp for the same reason.  The weary thought rose in her mind that she might even lie down and sleep.  But she pulled herself together and told herself that this was like the temptation of believing in the nightmare.  He was gone, and she had a respite—­but was it to be anything more?  She did not make any attempt to leave her place of concealment, remembering the strange things she had learned in watching him, and the strange terror in which Rosalie lived.