"She is my Italian maid. We are alone here this fall and she will be wild if I don't hurry. She has been with me since I was a child and I'm scarcely allowed to breathe without her permission," she replied rather more expansively than she had intended. "Well, if you must!" he shrugged. "I suppose I ought to say something romantic about 'ships that pass in the night,' etc. But as I am a misogynist"--he hesitated, looking at her with a sarcastic smile. She took him up gaily. "You merely hand me my hat, and tell me I look old enough to take care of myself!" She drew the flabby object down over her head, and met his smouldering gaze with a smile. "You're really not so glad to have me go as you pretend," she challenged. Then she caught her breath, for he had thrown out his arms with a savage look, and for a moment she thought he was going to crush her within them. But, letting them drop abruptly, he turned, and pulling his mackintosh off the wall, thrust it about her shoulders. "Let's go, since you wish it," he said shortly. A moment later they were stumbling down the mountainside. Almost obliterated by rain the path had become precipitous. Masses of dead leaves choked their progress. At every step they slid and waded, ankle-deep in scaly moisture, until Anne wanted to scream at the reptilian contact. "There's something corpse-like about them," she said, as she stumbled along behind the blinding rays of the lantern. "Why not? That's exactly what they are," he replied grimly. He held aside a sodden branch for her to pass under. "Corpses, heaped victims of the storm, as dead as you and I shall be some day, as dead as I wish I were myself this moment!" He laughed harshly. Then as her hand touched his arm, added more gently, "Surely, you are not afraid of death." "No, of course not." She huddled more closely to his side, "Only you're so young it seems a shame----" He interrupted her savagely. "All the better! Life is sufficiently drab without having to pass through the horrors of decrepitude and senility. Death is the only apology the gods can offer, for having thrust us into it." As he spoke they emerged from the dripping woods on to the road, and the walking became easier. "Don't you want to get somewhere, to do something worthwhile before you die?" she asked looking pityingly into the young face so white and set in the lantern rays. His lips curled. "Get somewhere! Do something! That is meaningless jargon. There is really no goal, no destination. We merely fool ourselves into thinking there is. Work is only a drug, a means of forgetting. A good drug, I admit, and at times even heady, but a drug, nevertheless!" Her hold upon his arm tightened. "Oh, how unhappy you must be! How sorry I am for you!" she cried with unmistakable sincerity. "Do tell me what is the matter. I am sure I could help you. You're so young, you probably exaggerate." She caught herself up for fear of wounding him. "I mean I'm older than you."