The face that looked at him from between the parted hazel boughs startled him almost as much as that white-robed figure last night. It was the face he had seen in the moonlight, and which he saw now with peculiar distinctness in the clear grey light—a wan white face, with large dark eyes—a face which once must have been most beautiful. The dark eyes, the delicate features, were still beautiful, but the complexion was almost ghastly in its pallor, and the eyes were unnaturally bright. This was Muriel Trevanard. Maurice thought she would have been frightened at sight of him, and would have hurried away. But, to his surprise, she came a little nearer him, cautiously, stealthily even, those restless eyes glancing right and left as she approached. There was a curious intensity in her gaze when her eyes fixed themselves at last upon his face, peering at him, scrutinizing him with something of her mother’s keen look. One hand was lifted to her head to push back the wild mass of tangled hair, and the loose sleeve of her gown fell back from the white wasted arm. Face and body seemed alike wasted by the mind’s consuming fire. ‘You can tell me, perhaps,’ she said, in a quick eager voice, ‘others won’t, they’re too unkind, for they must know. You can tell me, I’m sure. When will he come back?’ ‘My poor soul, I would gladly tell you if I knew. But I don’t even know whom you are talking of.’ ‘Oh yes, you do. Mother knows. She told you, I dare say. I’m not going to tell his name. I promised to keep that secret, whatever it cost me to be silent, and I’m not going to break my promise. When is he coming back?’ She paused, looking at him with beseeching expectant eyes, as if she waited breathless for his answer. ‘Is he ever coming back?’ She waited again. ‘Indeed, Miss Trevanard, I know nothing about it.’ ‘How dare you call me Miss Trevanard? That’s not my name.’ ‘Muriel, then.’ ‘That’s better. He called me Muriel.’ Her chin dropped on her breast, and she stood for a few moments looking down at the water, all her face softened by some sweet sad thought. ‘He called me Muriel,’ she repeated. ‘Muriel, Muriel. I can hear his voice now. Hear it—yes, as plainly as I can see him when I close my eyes.’ Again a pause, and then an eager question. ‘How can he be dead when he is so near me? How can he be dead when I hear him and see him, and can even feel the touch of his hand upon my head, his lips upon my lips. He awakes me from my sleep sometimes with a kiss, but when I open my eyes he is gone. Was he always a spirit?’ She seemed unconscious of Maurice’s presence as she moved a few paces further along the water’s edge, always looking downward, in self-communion. ‘My love, how can they say that you are dead, when I am waiting for you so patiently, and will wait for you to the end—wait till you come to take me away with you? It was to be little more than a year, you told me. Oh, God, what a long year!’