His room was next to Sybil’s. He had heard her come up-stairs and from his window could command the Point. When Shine left it he had gone down, passed the balcony where Stokes was waiting, and hearing his following footsteps, moved with that close imitation of Sybil’s gait to the summer-house. There the dim light and the drooping curls of his wig enabled him to carry through the deception. Stokes’ wild speech, followed by the drawing of the pistol, had terrified him. Confronted by a man armed and half-mad, panic had seized him and he had made a rush from the place. So Joe had died, a body clad in gala dress swirling out on currents that would never bring him back. Anne said nothing. She did not feel any special grief, or feeling of any kind. Too much had happened, she was benumbed. She had a vague sense that in some future time, when she had recovered from her dulled and battered state, she might be sorry, cry perhaps. Her eyes fell on her hand with Sybil’s clasped around it and the sight of the linked fingers roused her. They were like a symbol of the intertwined closeness of their lives, so much closer than hers and Joe’s had ever been. That brought her back to Sybil and Sybil’s inexplicable actions. She lifted her head and looked at the face beside her: “But--but--why did you do all this? Hide, not say anything, let them think you were dead?” “I wanted to get away.” “Get away! What for--where?” “To Jim Dallas. I know where he is.” “You’ve known?” “For a month. I’ve written him telling him I’d come if I could, if I _ever_ could. Oh, but it’s been hopeless. I was spied on, dogged, followed--” Her voice rose on a hoarse note, stopped, and after a scared listening hush, went on whisperingly: “I want to stay dead, never come to life here again. It’s my chance--the only chance I’ll ever have. You’ve found me now and I’ll tell you everything.” And she told Anne the story--the story that no one else has ever heard. Since she had received his address the longing to join her lover had possessed her. She had written she would come, she knew he was waiting for her, but the watch kept upon her made any move impossible. Whatever her anguish, she could not risk betraying his whereabouts; if it had been only herself she would have dared anything. In this position, growing daily more unbearable, had suddenly come the means of escape. Tragedy, swift and terrible as a bolt from the blue, had been her opportunity, and she had desperately seized it.