"I tell you I love you!" he said; "I'd go through hell for you. You've got to listen--you've got to _know_--" "You coward!" she sobbed. "I don't care what you say to me if you'll listen a moment--" "As Rita Tevis listened to you!" she said, white to the lips--"you murderer of souls!" And, as his grasp relaxed for a second, she tore her arm free, sprang forward and slashed him across the mouth with the lash. Behind her she heard his sharp cry of pain, heard him staggering about in the underbrush. Terror winged her feet and she fairly flew along the open ridge and down through the dead leaves across a soft, green, marshy hollow, hearing him somewhere in the woods behind her, coming on at a heavy run. For a long time she ran; and suddenly collapsed, falling in a huddled desperate heap, her slender hands catching at her throat. At the foot of the hill she saw him striding hither and thither, examining the soft forest soil or halting to listen--then as though scourged into action, running aimlessly toward where she lay, casting about on every side like a burly dog at fault. Once, when he stood not very far away, and she had hidden her face in her arms, trembling like a doomed thing--she heard him call to her--heard the cry burst from him as though in agony: "Valerie, don't be afraid! I was crazy to touch you;--I'll let you cut me to pieces if you'll only answer me." And again he shouted, in a voice made thin by fright: "For God's sake, Valerie, think of _me_ for a moment. Don't run off like that and let people know what's happened to you!" Then, in a moment, his heavy, hurried tread resounded; and he must have run very near to where she crouched, because she could hear him whimpering in his fear; but he ran on past where she lay, calling to her at intervals, until his frightened voice sounded at a distance and she could scarcely hear the rustle of the dead leaves under his hurrying tread. Even then terror held her chained, breathing fast like a wounded thing, eyes bright with the insanity of her fear. She lay flat in the leaves, not stirring. The last red sunbeams slanted through the woods, painting tree trunks crimson and running in fiery furrows through, the dead leaves; the sky faded to rose-colour, to mauve; faintly a star shone. For a long time now nothing had stirred in the woodland silence. And, as the star glimmered brighter through the branches, she shivered, moved, lay listening, then crawled a little way. Every sound that she made was a terror to her, every heart beat seemed to burst the silence. It was dusk when she crept out at last into a stony road, dragging her limbs; a fine mist had settled over the fields; the air grew keener. Somewhere in the darkness cow-bells tinkled; overhead, through the damp sheet of fog, the veiled stars were still shining.