It sounded very far away; she must have strayed farther from the path than she had been aware of. She must reply, or Felix would continue to advance, and find her with those tell-tale stains upon her face. She rose to her feet and cried back an answer--"Coming!" Then she looked round in distress. Close to where she had lain a tiny brook rippled through the wood. She knelt down by it, held her handkerchief in it, and bathed her hot eyes repeatedly in its comforting coolness. Then she washed her hands also, passed her pocket comb through her locks, and slowly took her way back to the road she had left. There was the povosska, and the driver munching at a plateful of supper. There was the cloth spread beneath a huge oak tree--but no Felix. However, as she appeared, he dashed out from a thicket, disturbance plainly written on his face. "Oh, there you are! I was afraid you had been too far," he said. She shook her head, smiling, and they sat down to eat. She tried valiantly to swallow the food he had so carefully laid out, but her throat seemed half closed, with a great lump which prevented appetite. He watched her. He saw the heavy lids, hardly able to lift themselves above the tear-dimmed eyes. He knew that she must have been weeping in solitude, unconsoled. He was pierced with the thought of his own selfishness. Here she was, all alone. The man she loved--the man to whom she journeyed through such difficulties--was ill. Her heart was full of anxiety; he had filled it, too, with self-reproach. He loathed himself. What had she done that he could fairly resent? Was it the action of anyone but a mad boy to ask a girl of sixteen, who had only seen him two or three times, to remain faithful to his memory? And if there was one thing more certain than another, it was that Denzil was blameless. He had never known the girl to be pledged in any way. He had not known who Felix was; he had believed him her brother. He, Felix, was responsible for the false position in which these two had been placed; he had invented the brother and sister fiction, and for his own selfish reasons. Yet, in his pride and revengeful anger, he was making her suffer desperately--he knew it. But he would beg her to forgive him. As soon as they had finished supper--but she hardly ate anything--he said, "Let us stroll in among these trees. It is a relief to move one's limbs after the confinement of that old povosska." Rona wavered. It were better for her not to walk with this man, not to be on terms with him. But something in her drove her on--made it impossible to refuse. She assented mutely. They passed together in among the silver trunks. The sun was dropping low. The clear call of a flight of herons came to them--and they saw the birds wheeling in the faint blue air above them. They reached a pool, starred with water strawberry, and, with a common impulse, they stood still upon its verge. "Rona!" said the young man, hoarsely.