Harriet, when she slipped out of the room, had gone downstairs. She could not have forced herself to leave before she had heard Hugh's story, and she could not define definitely even to herself what the feeling had been that had made her leave as soon as he had finished; but she sensed the reason vaguely. Hugh had told her two days before, "I will come back to you as you have never known me yet"--and it had proved true. She had known him as a man in fear, constrained, carefully guarding himself against others and against betrayal by himself; a man to whom all the world seemed opposed; so that her sympathy--and afterward something more than her sympathy--had gone out to him. To that repressed and threatened man, she had told all she felt toward him, revealing her feelings with a frankness that would have been impossible except that she wanted him to know that she was ready to stand against the world with him. Now the world was no longer against him; he had friends, a place in life was ready to receive him; he would be sought after, and his name would be among those of the people of her own sort. She had no shame that she had let him--and others--know all that she felt toward him; she gloried still in it; only now--now, if he wished her, he must make that plain; she could not, of herself, return to him. So unrest possessed her and the suspense of something hoped for but unfulfilled. She went from room to room, trying to absorb herself on her daily duties; but the house--her father's house--spoke to her now only of Hugh and she could think of nothing but him. Was he awake? Was he sleeping? Was he thinking of her? Or, now that the danger was over through which she had served him, were his thoughts of some one else? Her heart halted at each recurrence of that thought; and again and again she repeated his words to her at parting from her the night before. "I will come back to you as you have never known me yet!" To her he would come back, he said; to her, not to any one else. But his danger was not over then; in his great extremity and in his need of her, he might have felt what he did not feel now. If he wanted her, why did he not send for her? She stood trembling as she saw Edith Overton in the hall. "Hugh has been asking for you continually, Miss Santoine. If you can find time, please go in and see him." Harriet did not know what answer she made. She went upstairs: she ran, as soon as she was out of sight of Hugh's sister; then, at Hugh's door, she had to halt to catch her breath and compose herself before she opened the door and looked in upon him. He was alone and seemed asleep; at least his eyes were closed. Harriet stood an instant gazing at him.