He did not see her alone again till that evening. Meanwhile he had walked the shore, raging at himself for what had passed, put almost beside his reason at thought of what might come. After blindness, it was an aching sight that disclosed how their friendship--so wholesome, firm, and precious--could change at a breath, and in the most tranquil moment of security could totter above unknown deeps. Was he then worse than Tony, and their house no better than the drunkard’s? This girl had fled to him; she had taken his promises, was here upon his honor; and now, because he had willfully drifted down a pleasant way, they had reached such a pass that--He closed the thought with a groan. By some detestable trick, he foresaw, their very speech could no longer be free and honest. She made no offer, that evening, to go down with him to the lamps; and he was rather glad of the fact than sorry at its cause. To walk alone from tower to tower, through the cool firs and cedars, proved a respite. Yet when he faced the hill to return, trepidation seized him afresh. He climbed toward the house, vexed and wondering; and for the second time in all his memory, was afraid to enter. She sat behind the candle-flame, a great book flattened wide on the table, and her head bent over it as for dear life. All the brightness in the room had gathered in this corner, and at first he dared not go near. But it was now or never with his play-acting; and so, choosing a book at random, he sat down opposite her resolutely, to begin the pretense that all things remained as before. Ella had gone to bed with the birds. Except the two readers, all the world might have been asleep. Their breathing, and the tick of a death watch in the wall, made the only sounds in house or valley. For all the window stood open, the little blade of light between them reared without wavering. This silence at full stretch, this preposterous calmness at close range, were alike unreal and unbearable. His book appeared to be “The Polar and Tropical Worlds,” a treasury of boyhood; but the pictures swam in a blur--icebergs, gorillas, the open coffin on Spitzbergen, the march of land-crabs through a palm-grove, all an empty jumble. Sometimes his eyesight escaped the page; but then perhaps he found her looking up, by the same chance; caught for an instant, as her eyes dropped, the last of a pitiful, appealing light; and plunged into his book again, like a desperate man hunting a text of divination. He might thus have turned a hundred pages, and she none at all, when the contest ended. There came a stir, a little broken sound, abrupt and choking, which tugged at his heart more than words. “Oh,” she sobbed, “where can I go next?” and dropped head upon arms, across the open volume. As though a musket were shot off in the room, his chair had struck the floor. He circled the table and caught her up, in a gust that sent the candle-light reeling.