The long afternoon wore on. The trees of the garden crowded round Betty with soft whispers in a language not known of the trees on the boulevards. "I am very very unhappy," said Betty with a deep sigh of delight. She went in, unpacked, arranged everything neatly. She always arranged everything neatly, but nothing ever would stay arranged. She wrote to her father, explaining that Madame Gautier had brought her and the other girls to Grez for the summer, and she gave as her address: Chez Madame Chevillon, Pavilion du Jardin, Grez. "I shall be very very unhappy to-morrow," said Betty that night, laying her face against the coarse cool linen of her pillow; "to-day I have been stunned---I haven't been able to feel anything. But to-morrow." To-morrow, she knew, would be golden and green even as to-day. But she should not care. She did not want to be happy. How could she be happy now that she had of her own free will put away the love of her life? She called and beckoned to all the thoughts that the green world shut out, and they came at her call, fluttering black wings to hide the sights and sounds of field and wood and green garden, and making their nest in her heart. "Yes," she said, turning the hot rough pillow, "now it begins to hurt again. I knew it would." It hurt more than she had meant it to hurt, when she beckoned those black-winged thoughts. It hurt so much that she could not sleep. She got up and leaned from the window. She wondered where Vernon was. It was quite early. Not eleven. Lady St. Craye had called that quite early. "He's with _her_, of course," said Betty, "sitting at her feet, no doubt, and looking up at her hateful eyes, and holding her horrid hand, and forgetting that he ever knew a girl named Me." Betty dressed and went out. She crossed the garden. It was very dark among the trees. It would be lighter in the road. The big yard door was ajar. She pushed it softly. It creaked and let her through into the silent street. There were no lights in the hotel, no lights in any of the houses. She stood a moment, hesitating. A door creaked inside the hotel. She took the road to the river. "I wonder if people ever _do_ drown themselves for love," said Betty: "he'd be sorry then." CHAPTER XXII. THE LUNATIC. The night kept its promise. Betty, slipping from the sleeping house into the quiet darkness, seemed to slip into a poppy-fringed pool of oblivion. The night laid fresh, cold hands on her tired eyes, and shut out many things. She paused for a minute on the bridge to listen to the restful restless whisper of the water against the rough stone. Her eyes growing used to the darkness discerned the white ribbon of road unrolling before her. The trees were growing thicker. This must be the forest. Certainly it was the forest.