“Why, you’re not such a coward as all that!” her cousin replied. “Think what it must be for Nance Purvis, who always lives down there! I shouldn’t like to be more cowardly than a poor crazy labouring girl. We really _ought_ to visit the place, once in a way, to see if these stories are true about her escaping out of the house. One can never tell from what Mark says. He may have been drinking and imagining it all.” Lacrima turned away and began rapidly undressing. Without a word she arranged the books on her table, moving about like a person in a trance, and without a word she slipped into bed and turned her face to the wall. Gladys smiled, stretched herself luxuriously, and continued speaking. “Auber Lake by moonlight would well be worth a night walk. You know it’s supposed to be the most romantic spot in Somersetshire? They say it’s incredibly old. Some people think it was used in prehistoric times by the druids as a place of worship. The villagers never dare to go near it after dark. They say that very curious noises are heard there. But of course that may only be the mad--” She was not allowed to go on. The silent figure in the bed suddenly sat straight up, with wide-staring eyes fixed upon her, and said slowly and solemnly, “If I come with you to this place, will you faithfully promise me that your father will send that girl into a home?” Gladys was so surprised by this unexpected utterance that she made an inarticulate gasping noise in her throat. “Yes,” she answered, mesmerized by the Pariah’s fixed glance. “Yes--most certainly. If you come with me to see those wild-geese, I’ll make any promise you like about that girl!” Lacrima continued for a moment fixing her with wide-dilated pupils. Then, with a shiver that passed from head to foot, she slowly sank back on her pillows and closed her eyes. Gladys rose a little uneasily from her chair. “But of course,” she said, “you understand she may not _want_ to go away. She is quite crazy, you know. And she may prefer wandering about freely among dark woods to being locked up in a nice white-washed asylum, under the care of fat motherly nurses!” With this parting shot she went off into her own room feeling in a curious vague manner that somehow or another the edge of her delectation had been taken off. In this unexpected resolution of the Italian, the Mythology of Sacrifice had suddenly struck a staggering blow at the Mythology of Power. Like the point of a bright silver sword, this unforseen vein of heroism in the Pariah cleared the sultry air of that hot night with a magical freshness and coolness. A planetary onlooker might have been conscious at that moment of strange spiritual vibrations passing to and fro over the sleeping roofs of Nevilton. But perhaps such a one would also have been conscious of the abysmal indifference to either stream of opposing influence, of the high, cold galaxy of the Milky Way, stretched contemptuously above them all!