She flung aside her work, and wandered away along a narrow winding pathway, trodden by the feet of previous wanderers, upward and upward towards the granite point of the Dent du Jaman, gray against the sapphire sky. She walked, scarcely knowing where she went, or why: urged by a fever of the mind, which hurried her any whither to escape from the weariness of her own thoughts; as if such escape were possible to humanity. She had been walking along the same serpentine path for nearly an hour, neither knowing nor caring where it might be leading her. The gray peak of the granite rock always rose yonder in the same distant patch of blue above the dark pine-trees. It seemed as if she might go on mounting this hilly path for ever and get no nearer to that lonely point. ‘It as far off as happiness or contentment,’ she said to herself; ‘vain to dream of reaching it.’ She stopped at last, and looked at her watch, feeling that the afternoon was wearing on, and that it might be time for her to hurry back to the family circle. It was past five, and the dinner hour was seven; and she had been roaming upwards by paths which might lead her astray in the descent, one woodland path being so like another. She began her homeward journey, walking quickly, her thoughtful eyes bent upon the ground. She was hurrying on, absorbed in her own thoughts, when her name was uttered by that one only voice which had power to thrill her soul. ‘Daphne!’ She looked up and saw Gerald Goring, seated on a fallen pine-trunk, smoking. He flung away his cigarette and came towards her. ‘Good afternoon,’ she said, with a careless nod; ‘I am hurrying back to dinner.’ He put out his hand and caught her by the arm, and drew her towards him authoritatively. ‘You are not going to escape me so easily,’ he said, pale to the lips with strongest feeling. ‘No; you and I have a long reckoning to settle. What do you think I am made of, that you dare to treat me as you have done for the last month? Am I a dog to be whistled to your side, to be lured away from love and fealty to another by every trick, and grace, and charm within the compass of woman’s art, and then to be dismissed like a dog—sent back to my former owner? You think you can cure me of my folly—cure me by silence and averted looks—that I can forget you and be again the man I was before I loved you. Daphne, you should know me better than that. You have kindled a fire in my blood which you alone can quench. You have steeped me in a poison for which you have the only antidote. Oh! my Œnone! my Œnone! will you refuse the balm that can heal my wounds, the balsam that you alone can bestow?’ Daphne looked at him without flinching, the sweet girlish face deadly pale, but fixed as marble. ‘I told you what I thought and meant in my letter,’ she said quietly. ‘I have never wavered from that.’