"Then you don't mind waiting here a few moments for me?" "No," she said. "You will return here?" "Yes," he said; and with that permission, he left her. Both had spoken so that the man above could not have heard; and Harriet now noticed that, as her companion hurried ahead, he went almost noiselessly. As he disappeared, the impulse to call him back almost controlled her; then she started to follow him; but she did not. She stood still, shivering a little now in the cold; and as she listened, she no longer heard his footsteps. What she had done was done; then just as she was telling herself that it must be many moments before she would know whether he was coming back, she heard him returning; at some little distance, he spoke her name so as not to frighten her. She knew at once it was he, but a change in the tone surprised her. She stepped forward to meet him. "You found your friend?" "Yes." "What did he tell you?" Her hand caught his sleeve in an impulse of concern, but she tried to make it seem as though she grasped him to guide her through the trees of the ravine. "I mean what is wrong that you did not expect?" She heard his breath come fast. "Nothing," he denied. "No; you must tell me!" Her hand was still on his arm. "I cannot." "Why can you not?" "Why?" "Can't you trust me?" "Trust you!" he cried. He turned to her and seized her hands. "You ask me to--trust you!" "Yes; I've trusted you. Can't you believe as much in me?" "Believe in you, Miss Santoine!" He crushed her fingers in his grasp. "Oh, my God, I wish I could!" "You wish you could?" she echoed. The tone of it struck her like a blow, and she tore her hands away. "What do you mean by that?" He made no reply but stood staring at her through the dark. "We must go back," he said queerly. "You're cold." She did not answer but started back up the path to the house. He seemed to have caught himself together against some impulse that stirred him strongly. "The man out there who saw us? He will report to your father, Miss Santoine?" he asked unsteadily. "Reports for Father are first made to me." "I see." He did not ask her what she was going to do; if he was assuming that her permission to exceed his set limits bound her not to report to her father, she did not accept that assumption, though she would not report to the blind man to-night, for she knew he must now be asleep. But she felt that Eaton was no longer thinking of this. As they entered the house and he helped her lay off her cape, he suddenly faced her. "We are in a strange relation to each other, Miss Santoine--stranger than you know," he said unevenly. She waited for him to go on.