It was early in the afternoon, and warm withal. Left alone Nidia grew drowsy and fell into a doze. When she awoke the sun was just going off the valley beneath, and she was still alone. She sat up congratulating herself upon having got through those lonely hours in sleep. He would be back now at any moment. Rising, she went over to the runnel of water which trickled down the rocks just behind their resting-place, and bathed her face in one of its clear basins. Then she returned. Still no John Ames. The sun was off the valley now--off the world. In the brief twilight the stars began to rush forth. A terrible loneliness came over her. Oh, why was he so late? The two water-holes in the valley glared up at her with a lack-lustre stare, as of a pair of gigantic eyes, watching her loneliness. Still he came not. Was he uncertain of the place? They had but just arrived there, and he might well be. Fool that she was not to have thought of it, and now her hands trembled with eagerness as she collected some dry grass and sticks together, and caring nothing what other eyes might see it if only his would, kindled them into a bright blaze. How her hearing was strained to its uttermost tension! Every rustle of a leaf, every snapping of a twig, sent a thrill of anticipatory joy through her being, only to give way to sickening disappointment. An hour went by, then two. Faint and exhausted, she had not even the energy to prepare food. The one consciousness of her appalling loneliness here in this scarcely trodden waste seemed to sap and paralyse all her facilities. The weird voices of the night held a different meaning now that she was lying out alone on the hillside. Below, in the swamp, the trailing gleam of will-o'-the-wisps played fitfully, and the croaking of frogs was never stilled. Had anything befallen him? It must be so. Nothing short of that could have kept him from returning to her. And she? She could do nothing to aid him. She was so absolutely helpless. "Oh, darling! why did I ever allow you to leave me, my own, my true chivalrous love?" she murmured to herself amid a rain of tears, confiding to herself the secret of her heart in the agony of her distress and terror. And still the dark hours wore on, one upon another, and he--the companion, protector--lover--did not return. The night she had spent hiding in the river-bank after the slaughter of the Hollingworths could hardly be surpassed for horror and apprehension, Nidia had thought at the time. Now she recognised that it had been as nothing to this one. Then she had hardly known the secret of her heart--now she had discovered it. But--too late. Yet, was it too late? Harm might not have befallen him, after all. He might have missed his way in the darkness. In the very earliest dawn he would return, and then the joy of it! This hope acted like a sedative to poor Nidia's overwrought brain. The night air was soft and balmy. At last she slept.