But the darkness was reassuring. The dimmed lights of the automobile that had stood by the roadside were no longer visible. The men had gone away in the other direction. She was alone on the road--with at least another mile to go before she could turn again into the highway, and she found an overwhelming tremble upon her. Her very spirit seemed to be quivering with it. The night which had been warm and balmy seemed turned to fearful cold and she shivered as she tried to hurry along. Now and then the moon swept out and threw her shadow along the way, and she glanced furtively behind her and shrank into the shadow of the elderberry bushes by the fence. Once a wild rabbit scuttled across the road and startled her so that she almost fell. She began to reproach herself for having gone away from home in this silly aimless way, losing her temper like a child and walking out from safety and protection without preparation. She wondered if God were angry with her for it. She wondered why she had done it and what she was going to do anyway, but most of all she wondered what those dark figures on the hillside had been doing, and why the shoulders of her friend had drooped as if with shame. Most of all this dragged upon her soul and kept her from fleetness. For how must the feet drag when the heart is weighed down! She came at last into the highway, and heard by the tolling of the clock on a distant barn that it was two o’clock. It gave her a strange sense of detachment from the world to be thus adrift at that dark, prowling time of the night. The road was empty either way. Not even a light of a distant car was in sight. If she could only hope to find a place of shelter before another came. Surely it could not be much longer so empty on the highway. Some one would be going by. Some one would see her. They would think it strange. They would think ill of her if they saw her. There was no hope for help from any passing car. She would not dare accept it if it were offered.