She answered him more by the abandonment with which she lay in his arms than by the faltering sentences in which she sometimes whispered while they stood there. She was whispering, "I never meant you should think I was afraid. Percival, I never meant you should think I did not want to speak about our love. Only--" when she shivered violently, and he chid himself for keeping her there, and for warmth's sake, he leading the horses, they walked the last mile to the Abbey. Ardently then he talked to her of future plans. He told her that late in the next year it was arranged he was to go out to the Argentine with some ponies. A big business was like to be established there, arising out of a sale to a South American syndicate, and he was to arrange it and to select and bring back ponies of a native strain for the development of a likely type. When he returned--"This is why I am telling you, darling,"--the good old Rough 'Uns had declared he should formally be made partner in what had now become a great enterprise. "I shall claim you then, my darling. I shall be able to claim you then." She surprised him--and, not aware of her reason, thrilled him--by halting suddenly and clasping his hands that had been holding hers. "Oh, don't leave me, Percival! Percival, don't go away!" He kissed her adoringly. "Do you love me so?" She clung to him and only said: "Don't leave me, Percival. Percival, you must not," and while he sought to soothe her plea--and still was thrilled to hear it--suddenly went into a tempest of weeping, changing his tender happiness to tenderest concern. "Dora! Why, what is it? What is it, my darling? Tell me, tell me--ah, don't, don't cry, don't tremble like that." She had not controlled herself to answer him when sound of wheels came down the road, lamps through the gloom. She checked herself, and was at her horse's head when there drew up a carriage sent from the Abbey to meet her and bring her back in shelter from the rain. A groom took her horse and, standing by the door as she entered, prevented explanation she might have made--had she been able to explain. IV Had she been able--for the thing that caused her sudden tears and sudden plea was no more than a glimpse, one of those transient glimpses of the walls, of the purpose, of the end of her training; differing from other glimpses that sometimes came in that it caught her unstrung. If it flickered again in the weeks that followed, it little more disturbed her than sudden shadow across the garden disturbs the butterfly passing among the flowers; a flicker of misgiving, a vague disturbance--gone. The year's end took her away with her mother to town. Succeeding Autumn that brought them back started Percival to the Argentine.