The sudden change that swept over her was startling.  She sprang to her feet, the music breaking in mid-strain and the bow slipping from her hand to the grass.  Every hint of colour fled from her face and she trembled like one of the wind-stirred June lilies.

“I beg your pardon,” said Eric hastily.  “I am sorry that I have alarmed you.  But your music was so beautiful that I did not remember you were not aware of my presence here.  Please forgive me.”

He stopped in dismay, for he suddenly realized that the expression on the girl’s face was one of terror—­not merely the startled alarm of a shy, childlike creature who had thought herself alone, but absolute terror.  It was betrayed in her blanched and quivering lips and in the widely distended blue eyes that stared back into his with the expression of some trapped wild thing.

It hurt him that any woman should look at him in such a fashion, at him who had always held womanhood in such reverence.

“Don’t look so frightened,” he said gently, thinking only of calming her fear, and speaking as he would to a child.  “I will not hurt you.  You are safe, quite safe.”

In his eagerness to reassure her he took an unconscious step forward.  Instantly she turned, and, without a sound, fled across the orchard, through a gap in the northern fence and along what seemed to be a lane bordering the fir wood beyond and arched over with wild cherry trees misty white in the gathering gloom.  Before Eric could recover his wits she had vanished from his sight among the firs.

He stooped and picked up the violin bow, feeling slightly foolish and very much annoyed.

“Well, this is a most mysterious thing,” he said, somewhat impatiently.  “Am I bewitched?  Who was she?  What was she?  Can it be possible that she is a Lindsay girl?  And why in the name of all that’s provoking should she be so frightened at the mere sight of me?  I have never thought I was a particularly hideous person, but certainly this adventure has not increased my vanity to any perceptible extent.  Perhaps I have wandered into an enchanted orchard, and been outwardly transformed into an ogre.  Now that I have come to think of it, there is something quite uncanny about the place.  Anything might happen here.  It is no common orchard for the production of marketable apples, that is plain to be seen.  No, it’s a most unwholesome locality; and the sooner I make my escape from it the better.”

He glanced about it with a whimsical smile.  The light was fading rapidly and the orchard was full of soft, creeping shadows and silences.  It seemed to wink sleepy eyes of impish enjoyment at his perplexity.  He laid the violin bow down on the old bench.

“Well, there is no use in my following her, and I have no right to do so even if it were of use.  But I certainly wish she hadn’t fled in such evident terror.  Eyes like hers were never meant to express anything but tenderness and trust.  Why—­why—­why was she so frightened?  And who—­who—­who—­can she be?”