“Why, what are you doing here? Where is my wife?”
“I came to tell you that Olive had gone home, and that she had got her hat all right. She never was in any danger at all. It was a mistake on the part of that negro boy.”
“Madame!” began Ezra.
“Dear friend,” said she.
“I feel so strange and bewildered, I don’t seem to know what has happened.”
“Lay your head down again,” said Madame, very gently. “You have had a blow. You will soon be all right.”
Ezra’s head sank again into her lap. He gave a deep sigh.
“You came down here into the Gully after Olive who, according to the negro, had gone in search of her hat. You could not surely have realized that the fire was coming up against the wind and that it would be death to be caught among the weeds.”
“I knew, I knew,” said Ezra. “That was why I came. Olive was here.”
“But she wasn’t, she never had been here at all,” interrupted Madame.