"A note!" she echoed, her voice vibrating with scorn. "Oh, Duke, Duke, sometimes I wonder if you can understand?--if any man ever understands? I came here, risking all, everything for you; you've been the sun in my heaven ever since I can remember; you've always been something very bright and very far away that is not to be touched or harmed. Yes, I come here to beg you not to ruin yourself body and soul, and you ask me to take a note!" A sudden flash of lightning from the storm, now nigh at hand, lit up the room for a second, and showed her to him standing white and rigid like some accusing angel. "You say you're fond of her, but you're not. I tell ye you're no fond of her, Duke; ye ken na what love is--an' I do--for I love the verra ground you tread on, the verra things you've touched----" Her voice, which in the extremity of her passion had forgotten its acquired accent, failed; she sank back to her seat, and, throwing her arms out over the table, buried her face in them. And a great silence fell between them, man and woman. At last he laid his hand on her shoulder, and spoke humbly. "I beg your pardon, Marmie; I did not understand, But I'm not worth it, child. Let me go my way----" She pulled herself together. "It's time I was going home," she said, unsteadily. "You can't go in this storm," he put in relieved, as all men are, that the mental storm was over, "you'd better stop here for the night. I"--he went to the fire and deliberately lit the candles, as if, with their light, to bring things back to normal again--"I--I'll find a bed somewhere, and you can stop----" Marrion interrupted him hastily. "No, no, I must go! Folk will wonder. The boat is on this shore. I can easily slip over." He walked to the window and looked out. "It's raining cats and dogs; you can't go!" he said masterfully. "You stop here like a good girl, and I'll go and settle up something for myself." He left the room and for one second she stood irresolute. Should she stop? He had called her his wife, would doubtless call her so again to the landlady, and if she stopped--if she stopped---- Then, with a little sob, she caught up her cloak and ran downstairs. The night was dark, but the moon shone fitfully between rifts in the clouds. The rain, coming in gusts with the wind, had ceased for a moment. She drew the hood of her cloak over her head and ran swiftly past the lighted windows of the bar, thinking she had escaped; but a moment after she heard swift steps following her own and, turning to look, saw Marmaduke, hatless, coatless, in pursuit. The instinct of the chase awoke in her in a second; she doubled off the white road behind the shelter of a low beech copse. "Marmie, Marmie, stop, I tell you! Don't be a little fool!" Easy to say that. But it was he was the fool, not she. If she kept in such cover as there was she might reach the boat before him--she must! In the old days she had run as quick as he; and she knew where the boat was and he didn't.