Her dream passed like the rending of a veil. His eyes pierced her, but she had to meet them, lacking power to do otherwise. So for a space they looked at one another in the moonlight, saying no word, scarcely so much as breathing. Then, at last he got to his feet with the heavy movements of a tired man, stood a while longer looking down at her, finally turned in utter silence and left her. When Sylvia slept, many hours later, there came again to her for the third and last time the awful dream of two horsemen who galloped towards each other upon the same rocky path. She saw again the shock of collision and the awful hurtling fall. She went again down into the stony valley and searched for the man who she knew was dead. She found him in a deep place that no other living being had ever entered. He lay with his face upturned to the moonlight, and his eyes wide and glassy gazing upwards. She drew near, and stooped to close those eyes; but she could not. For they gazed straight into her own. They pierced her soul with the mute reproach of a silence that could never be broken again. She turned and went away through a devastating loneliness. She knew now which of the two had galloped free and which had fallen, and she went as one without hope or comfort, wandering through the waste places of the earth. Late in the morning she awoke and looked out upon a world of dreadful sunshine,--a parched and barren world that panted in vain for the healing of rain. "It is a land of blasted hopes," she told herself drearily. "Everything in it is doomed." CHAPTER VI THE PARTING Sylvia entered the sitting-room that day with the feeling of one returning after a prolonged absence. She had been almost too tired to notice her surroundings the previous night upon arrival. Her limbs felt leaden still, but her brain was alive and throbbing with a painful intensity. Mary Ann informed her that the big _baas_ was out on the lands, and she received the news thankfully. Now was her chance! She took it, feeling like a traitor. Once more she went to Burke's room. She opened the strong-box stealthily, listening intently for every sound. She slipped the packet of notes inside, and shut it again quickly with a queer little twist of the heart as she caught sight of the envelope containing the cigarette which once he had drawn from between her lips. Then with a start she heard the sound of hoofs outside the window, and she knew that Burke had returned. She hurried from the room with the key in her hand, meeting him in the passage. He had his back to the light, but she thought he looked very grim. The past weeks had aged and hardened him. She wondered if they had wrought a similar change in her. He spoke to her at once, before she had time to formulate a greeting. "Ah, here you are! Will you come in here? I want to speak to you."