still have been there, within reach of her, or beside her. The very dream
of it made her crouch more closely behind the pile of planks.

The moon is at her height; across the bay, mountains and lower hills rise
towards her, "ambitious" for that silver hallowing she sheds upon shore
and bay. The night is one sigh of softness. The rivers glide glistening
to the sea. Even the shining roofs of the little station and the white
line of the road have beauty, mingle in the common spell. But on Laura it
does not work. She is in the hall at Bannisdale--on the Marsland
platform--in the woodland roads through which Mr. Helbeck has driven
home.

No!--by now he is in his study. She sees the crucifix, the books, the
little altar. There he sits--he is thinking, perhaps, of the girl who is
out in the night with her drunken cousin, the girl whom he has warned,
protected, thought for in a hundred ways--who had planned this day out of
mere wilfulness--who cannot possibly have made any honest mistake as to
times and trains.

She wrings her hands. Oh! but Polly must have explained, must have
convinced him that owing to a prig's self-confidence they were all
equally foolish, equally misled. Unless Hubert--? But then, how is she at
fault? In imagination she says it all through Polly's lips. The words
glow hot and piteous, carrying her soul with them. But that face in the
oak chair does not change.

Yet in flashes the mind works clearly; it rises and rebukes this surging
pain that breaks upon it like waves upon a reef. Folly! If a girl's name
were indeed at the mercy of such chances, why should one care--take any
trouble? Would such a ravening world be worth respecting, worth the