The trees were thinner. Ahead she saw glimpses of a world that looked quite light, the bridge ahead. With one last spurt she ran across it, tore up the little bit of street, slipped through the door, and between the garden trees to her pavilion. She looked very carefully in every corner--all was still and empty. She locked the door, and fell face downward on her bed. Vernon in his studio was "thinking things over" after the advice of Miss Voscoe in much the same attitude. "Oh," said Betty, "I will never go out at night again! And I will leave this horrible, horrible place the very first thing to-morrow morning!" But to-morrow morning touched the night's events with new colours from its shining palette. "After all, even a lunatic has a right to walk out in the forest if it wants to," she told herself, "and it didn't know I was there, I expect, really. But I think I'll go and stay at some other hotel." She asked, when her "complete coffee" came to her, what the mad gentleman did all day. "He is not so stupid as Mademoiselle supposes," said Marie. "All the artists are insane, and he, he is only a little more insane than the others. He is not a real mad, all the same, see you. To-day he makes drawings at Montigny." "Which way is Montigny?" asked Betty. And, learning, strolled, when her coffee was finished, by what looked like the other way. It took her to the river. "It's like the Medway," said Betty, stooping to the fat cowslips at her feet, "only prettier; and I never saw any cowslips here--You dears!" Betty would not look at her sorrow in this gay, glad world. But she knew at last what her sorrow's name was. She saw now that it was love that had stood all the winter between her and Vernon, holding a hand of each. In her blindness she had called it friendship,--but now she knew its real, royal name. She felt that her heart was broken. Even the fact that her grief was a thing to be indulged or denied at will brought her no doubts. She had always wanted to be brave and noble. Well, now she was being both. A turn of the river brought to sight a wide reach dotted with green islands, each a tiny forest of willow saplings and young alders. There was a boat moored under an aspen, a great clumsy boat, but it had sculls in it. It would be pleasant to go out to the islands. She got into the boat, loosened the heavy rattling chain and flung it in board, took up the sculls and began to pull. It was easy work. "I didn't know I was such a good oar," said Betty as the boat crept swiftly down the river. As she stepped into the boat, she noticed the long river reeds straining down stream like the green hair of hidden water-nixies. She would land at the big island--the boat steered easily and lightly enough for all its size--but before she could ship her oars and grasp at a willow root she shot past the island. Then she remembered the streaming green weeds.