She leaned forward, peering into the gray blur before. She was conscious only of interminable mist and one person it held away from her. She watched Thair’s pink coat moving like a will-o’-the-wisp. Now it stopped. Thair shouted to the driver. The victoria turned, dipped under the trees, passed between two gate-posts. She saw long grass under the wheels. The carriage rocked over broken ground. The horses were at a canter. Through a second gate, with a lurch, one wheel thumping over the bars half drawn aside. They were in the fields, with the ocean’s hoarse voice dwindled to a whisper that was “Hush!” while her heart, audible to her in the deep silence, drummed “Hurry, hurry, hurry!” Then above the melancholy sea she heard the sharp chopping of the pack. Cruel sound! It made her shiver. Then a hallo. Gray shapes moved in the fog like shadows on a sheet. One was close to the carriage, a woman crying. Then Holden’s voice saying to Thair, “Quicker than we hoped”; then, beside the carriage, exclaiming, “Florence!” Her name was on his lips for the first time. She did not hear it. “Where is he?” she said. “Wait here,” Holden answered, and rode ahead. The carriage stopped. She sprang out and ran forward a few steps—paused. She saw two men coming toward her, carrying something between them. Nearer, she saw it was a man. He hung dead weight, head fallen back, arms hanging, hands trailing in the long, wet grass. Behind, like a following dog, came a tall bare-headed girl. It seemed unreal, a play scene, till she saw the injured man’s face, dead white, with a dark streak across the mouth that lengthened it out into a horrible smile. “Over here,” Florence said to the coachman. Her voice was lost in her throat, but he obeyed the beckoning hand. She was back in the carriage. The men were lifting up the burden her hands reached for. “Easy with the shoulders!” Thair muttered. They laid it on the heaped-up cushions. Trembling as she was, she seemed to lift and move the inert body as easily as the men. She stooped and wiped away the stain that disfigured the poor face. And then it seemed the vacancy of it was the saddest look it could have worn. “Can’t we get back by a road? The cut’s so rough?” she appealed to Holden. The somber eyes of the men consulted each other. “Yes,” Thair decided; “strike the country-club road over here. Longer, but—better.” Holden nodded to the whipper-in. “We’ll go ahead and knock out some rails.” “You’d better go back to the house with ’em,” Thair called after him. “We’ll ride over and let ’em know at the club.” He turned to Julia, who, through it all, had stood back, not moving or taking her eyes from the shape in the carriage. “_You_ ought to go in the victoria.” She turned her eyes quickly to Florence. She put her hands to her face. “No! No!” she cried with vehemence—it might have been horror.