Then Hartley, in desperation, rode straight down on her, for already they were getting in among the thick of the trees. He caught her under the shoulders with one arm, as he swung in on her, and as her mare was shouldered over and went suddenly sprawling and tumbling to the grass, he held tight with his knees and clung to the trailing figure in green. He clung to her and carried her out at his side in that way until his own frightened roan could be pulled up, panting and bewildered, with the blood staining the foam from its bruised mouth. He slipped to the ground, in some way, still holding her. Her face was colorless, but she looked up at him with the old luminous and wonderful eyes. He was breathing heavily, but he still held her. "My darling!" she said, locking her arms about his neck, as a torrent of happy tears came to her eyes. "My darling!" He still held her there close to him, but in silence, until two gardeners and a Park policeman came to their assistance. Ten minutes later a mounted policeman rode up with the recaptured mare. A passing hansom was stopped, and Cordelia was handed up into it. The mounted policeman wrote down his notes, and rode away tucking Hartley's bill into his pocket. It all seemed over and past with kaleidoscopic rapidity. "Will you be able to manage them?" Cordelia cried, concerned, as she saw Hartley mounting again, with her mare held short by the bridle-rein. "Quite easily. But you must get back at once!" Nothing, at that moment, could have made her happier than that commonplace half-command from his lips. She waved her gauntleted hand back at him; her face still stood out pale and wistful against the darkness of the hansom-box. "And you?" she asked. "I'll be right after you." "Then I'll have dinner ready for you!" she cried, as the hansom turned and disappeared down through the darkening mist, smiling to herself at the incongruousness of what she had said. It was only in fiction, she felt, that the opportune moment and the adequate word coincided. But driving home through the gray evening air with the tears still wet on her lashes, she pondered over a new and perturbing and yet not altogether painful problem: Could it be that she had played her part with him too, too earnestly? Must she lose him now, when he meant so much to her? CHAPTER XXV TARNISHED GOLD She yielded then where she had frowned, And fell her tears like leaves; She sank before him on the ground And clasped his iron greaves. JOHN HARTLEY, "The Broken Knight." After all, Rabelais' religion and women are one and the same thing--a great Perhaps.--"The Silver Poppy."