He was obliged to slacken his speed in order not to hurt her. He tried to shake her off, untwist her hands; she clung to him like a leech. Then he stopped short, panting. She could see the sweat dropping from his forehead; his teeth began to chatter. She still held his arm tightly with both hands. "Let me go--" he said, catching his breath spasmodically. "Not till you tell me where you've been--what you've been doing--tell me." "Doing--" He brought out the word with difficulty. "Yes, doing, don't you hear?" She shook his arm violently in her anxious terror. "I don't know--" the words were a long groan. "Where have you been then?--quick, tell me--" He began to shake with a hard nervous chill. "With him--over in the quarry woods--I tried to take him--he fought me--" The chill shook him till he could scarcely stand. She dropped his arm; drew away from him as if touching were contamination; then her eyes, dilating with a still greater horror, fixed themselves on the bosom of his shirt--there was a stain-- "Have you killed him--" she whispered hoarsely. The answer came through the clattering teeth: "I--I don't know--you said--you said you--never wanted to see him again--" Luigi found himself speaking the last words to the empty air; he was alone, in the middle of the road, in the full glare of an electric light. He was conscious of a desire to escape from it, to escape detection--to rid himself of his over-powering misery in the quietest way possible. He gathered himself together; his limbs steadied; the shivering grew less; he went on down the road at a quick walk. Already the quarrymen were coming out in force to see what might be up. He must avoid them at all hazards. * * * * * One thought was the motive power which sent Aileen running up the road towards the pastures, by crossing which she could reach in a few minutes the quarry woods: "I must know if he is dead; if he is not dead, I must try to save him from a living death." This thought alone sent her speeding over the darkened slopes. She was light of foot, but sometimes she stumbled; she was up and on again--the sheepfold her goal. The quarry woods stood out dark against the clear sky; there seemed to be more light on these uplands than below in The Gore; she saw the sheepfold like a square blot on the pasture slope. She reached it--should she call aloud--call his name? How find him? She listened intently; the wind had died down; the sheep were huddling and moving restlessly within the fold; this movement seemed unusual. She climbed the rough stone wall; the sheep were massed in one corner, heads to the wall, tails to the bare centre of the fold; they kept crowding closer and more close. In that bared space of hoof-trampled earth she saw him lying.