The curtain went up, and she jerked herself back to her surroundings. She tried to immerse herself anew in the play, but her interest was gone. The glamour had faded, and she knew that she was terribly, overwhelmingly tired. A desire for solitude came upon her and with it, inseparable from it, an intolerable sense of exile, a longing that was almost anguish for the peace of the open moors, for the scent of the bog-myrtle, and the rain. . . . She closed her eyes, and drew her memories about her like a mantle. . . . CHAPTER II THE NIGHTMARE Someone was speaking to her. A hand touched her. She looked up with a start. Rotherby was leaning over her. His eyes met hers closely, lingeringly, with a caress in them which her tiredness barely comprehended. “How tired you are!” he said. “Shall I take you home?” Home! For a few moments her weary brain clung piteously about the word. Then the pressure of his hand brought swift awakening. She sat up with a jerk. “Oh, is it over? Yes, I am very tired. Forgive me! Let us go!” His hand still held her. He slipped it under her elbow, helping her to rise. She got up quickly, and freed herself. He put her cloak about her in silence. They passed out of the box into the crowd that filled the corridor. “It’s pouring with rain,” said Rotherby, as they emerged into the vestibule. “Wait while I get the car!” He left her, and she took her stand at a corner of the steps, idly watching the press of people that thronged past her on to the pavement. Her sleep had left her slightly dazed, physically cold. The thought of the dear Devon she had left only that morning had sunk very far below the surface of her consciousness. It was as if years as well as distance separated her from it, and all she knew now was the ache of weariness and a certain dull disgust with everything about her. A man on the pavement below her, wearing an ulster with a cap drawn down over his eyes, evidently waiting for a conveyance, caught her passing attention because the set of his shoulders was somewhat reminiscent to her of the lonely horseman who had awaited her coming on the moor, but she was too apathetic to bestow more than a cursory glance upon any, and she shrank at the moment with something like panic from all things that might pain her. She was too tired to endure any more that night. Out of the press of hurrying people Rotherby detached himself and came to her. “It’s all right. Take my arm! The car is just here.” She obeyed him, for the throng was great, and her only desire to escape the vortex of humanity and find the rest she so sorely needed. He piloted her through the crowd. For a few seconds she felt the rain beating upon her uncovered head, and then she was sunk upon the cushions in the darkness of the car with Rotherby beside her, and the glittering streets slipping past with kaleidoscopic rapidity.