Eve was not conscious of any fear, only of an intense curiosity—a desire to know whether she was on the brink of some half foreseen crisis. It might be a tramp, it might be the man who came courting her girl Anne; but Anne had gone to bed with a headache an hour before Eve had come to her own room. In spite of these other possibilities, she felt prophetically convinced that it was Canterton. She did not move away from the window, knowing that the man, whoever he was, must have seen the outline of her head and shoulders against the light within. Her heart was beating faster. She could feel it as she leant with her bosom pressing upon the window-sill. She knew Canterton the moment he moved out into the moonlight, and, crossing the grass, came and stood under her window. He was bareheaded, and his face, as he looked up at her, gave her an impression of pallid and passionate obstinacy. “I had to come!” She felt a flutter of exultation, but it was the exultation of tragedy. “Madman!” “No, I am not mad. It is the sanest moment of my life.” “Then all the rest of the world is mad. Supposing—supposing the girl is still awake. Supposing——Oh, there are a hundred such suppositions! You risk them, and make me risk them.” “Because I am so sure of myself. I take the risk to promise you a homage that shall be inviolate. Am I a fool? Do you think that I have no self-control—that I shall ever cause this most spiritual thing to be betrayed? I tell you I can live this life. I can make it possible for you to live it.” Eve raised herself on her elbows, and seemed to be listening. There was the same stillness everywhere, the stillness that had been broken by Canterton’s voice. She leant out and spoke to him in an undertone. “I will come down. I suppose I must let you say all that you have to say.” She put out the light and felt her way out of the room and down the stairs into the hall. Her brain felt as clear as the sky out yonder, though the turmoil in her heart might have been part of the darkness through which she passed. Unlocking and unbolting the door, she found Canterton waiting. “You are making me do this mad thing.” She had not troubled to put on a hat, and her face was white and clear and unhidden. Its air of desperate and purposeful frankness struck him. Her eyes looked straight at his, steadily and unflinchingly, with no subtle glances, no cunning of the lids. “Let’s go down to the woods. Come!” She spoke as though she had taken command of the crisis, snatched it out of his strong hands. And Canterton obeyed her. They went down the lane in the high shadow of the hedgerows and across the main road into the fir woods, neither of them uttering a word.