Linking her fingers round his hand, so she went with him silently through the hall and down the steps; and stood there until he rode away into the darkness and the light of his work, and she came back into the light and the darkness of her own house. CHAPTER XVII. ALONE IN THE FIGHT. Nature, with all her many faces, her thousand voices has seldom a look or a tone to help our sorrow. Her joy is too endless in its upspringing, her tears are too fresh and sweet; even the calm steadiness of her quiet is to bewildered thoughts like the unflickering coast light, against which the wild birds of the ocean dash themselves, blinded, in the storm. Wych Hazel stood still at the foot of the steps, until not even imagination could hear so much as an echo of the rapid trot which she was not to hear again for so long a time. The sweet October night, its winds asleep, its insects silenced with a slight frost, its stars wheeling their brilliant courses without a cloud, all smote her like a pain. Then some faint stir of air brought, distantly and sweet, the scent of the woods where they had been chestnutting that very day. With a half cry the girl turned and fled up the steps, locking the door behind her; remembering then keenly what else she was shutting out. She went back to the red room, and stood there—she and the spirit of desolation. There was no tea tray, happily, with its cheerful reminders; but there was the corner of the mantelpiece, and the spot on the rug, and the fire—now slowly wearing down to embers, and the embers to ashes. There was her foot cushion—and the crimson bergère. But she could not touch anything,—could not take up the tongs which he had set down, even to put the fire in safe order for the night; some one else must do that. Slowly she went round the room, with a glance at everything; passed on to the door and stood looking back; then shut it and went slowly up the stairs. Midway she sat down and leaned her head against the banisters. Sat there she knew not how long, until she heard Mrs. Bywank's step going the rounds below; then rose and went on again. But as Wych Hazel's little foot passed slowly up from stair to stair, one thing in her mind came out in clear black and white, of one thing she was sure: she _must_ lay hold of those immutable things after which she had striven before. Mere hoping would not do, she must make sure. In the happiness of the last weeks, she had said, like David in his prosperity, "I shall never be moved,"— where was it all now? Above all other thoughts, even to-night, this came: she could not live so. Tossed by one storm upon a roof here, and by the next one carried out to sea. Something to hold her, something that she could hold,—that she must have.