The autumn of that year broke upon us with sobbing winds and wild, wet gusts of tempest laden with flying leaves. In the choked trenches, drowned grasses swayed and swung like torn skirt fringes of the meadows; in the woods, drenched leaves clung together and talked, through the lulls, of the devastation that was wrecking their aftermath of glory. It had been blowing in soft, irresistible onrushes all one dank October day, and all day had I spent in the high woods that crown the gentle hills three or four miles to the southwest of the city. The air in the long, quiet glades was mystic with the smell of decay; the heels of vanishing forms seemed to twinkle from tangled bends of undergrowth as I approached them. Then often, in going by a spot I could have thought lately tenanted, a sense would tingle through me as of something listening behind some aged trunk that stood back from my path. Gradually dark shut in, and I must needs thread my way among the trees, while some little show of light remained, if I did not wish to be belated in the dense thickets. It would not have troubled me greatly had this actually happened. To yield my tired limbs and wearier soul to some bed of moss set in the heart of an antique wood seemed a blessed and most restful thing to do. But the old man awaited me at home, and thither my duty must carry me. I had traversed a darkling alley of leafage, treading noiseless on the spongy floor of it, and was coming out into a little lap of tree-inclosed lawn that it led to when I stopped in a moment and drew myself back with a start. Something was there before me--a fantastic moving shape, that footed the grass in a weird, sinuous dance of intricate paces, and waving arms, and feet that hardly rustled on the dead leaves. It was all wild, elfin; ineffably strange and unearthly. I felt as if the dead past were revealed to me, and that here I might lay down my burden and yield the poor residue of life to one last ecstasy. Dipping, swaying; now here, now there, about the dusky plat of lawn; sometimes motionless for an instant, so that its drooping skirts and long, loosened hair made but one tree-like figure of it; again whirling into motion, with its dark tresses flung abroad--the figure circled round to within a yard of where I was standing. Then in a loud, tremulous tone I cried “Zyp!” and sprung into the open. She gave a shriek, craned her neck forward to gaze at me, and, falling upon her knees at my feet, clasped her arms about me. For a full minute we must have remained thus; and I heard nothing but the breathless panting of the girl. “Zyp,” I whispered at last, “what are you doing here, in the name of heaven?” “I wanted to see you, Renny. I have walked all the way from Southampton. Night came upon me as I was passing through the wood--and--and I couldn’t help it--I couldn’t help it.” “This mad dancing?” “I’m so unhappy. Renny, poor Zyp is so unhappy!” “Does this look like it?”