We stamped out the fire before we left, and stole silently across the moonlit meadows. She walked ahead at first in defiance; presently, ashamed of the distrust she had shown, she fell back and we traveled side by side. “Lil, I watched you; you were dreaming that you had your little baby back.” She placed her hand in mine, but she gave me no answer. “Who was he--the man who did this to you long ago, when you camped alone together?” She turned her face away; her voice shook with passion. “I don’t have to tell you; you know ’im.” The people were few with whom we were both acquainted. I ran over the names in my mind; the truth flashed out on me. “Was it because of that you wouldn’t camp at Woadley?” She bent her head, but the cloud of hatred in her face would have told me. After learning this new fact about Halloway, he was never long absent from my mind; for Lilith, though we never referred to him and she had at no time mentioned him by name, was a continual reminder. I became familiar with his doings through the papers. He was making a mark for himself in politics; there was even a talk that he might find a seat in the cabinet. I read of Lady Halloway’s seconding of her husband’s ambitions. From time to time her portrait was printed among those of society hostesses. But this Ruthita was unreal to me; she had nothing to do with the shy girl-friend whom I had known. Of the true Ruthita I learnt nothing. I often wondered what was the condition of affairs between herself and Halloway. Was she happy? Was he kind? Was it possible that she should have outlived her first judgment of him? Perhaps all this outward display of success had its hidden emptiness. Behind Halloway lay a host of ruined lives, Lilith’s among them, the waste of which he could not justify. I had been five years at Woadley, when my work made it necessary that I should spend some weeks in London in order to be near libraries. It was just after Christmas that I came to town. With my usual clinging to old associations, I took rooms at Chelsea, almost within sight of the mansion which had witnessed my uncle’s brief reign of splendor. From my windows I could see the turgid river sweeping down to Westminster, and the nurse-girls with perambulators and scarlet dots of soldiers loitering beneath bare trees of the Embankment.