She struggled up on the couch, and looked towards him with a wild expression of the eyes, forced out by recent terror or sudden joy at finding that she had not been deceived by some mental illusion.
"Is it you, Grantley?" she exclaimed. "Is it really you?"
"It is I," he said; "but it is a strange welcome home to a man when he finds his wife wandering about in the storm, and sees her faint at the sound of his voice."
Elizabeth Mellen forced her physical strength back by a sheer exercise of will. She sat upright—a singular expression passed over her face—an inward struggle to appear like herself and act as was natural under the circumstances.
"I was so frightened," she gasped; "I did not expect you for a fortnight—perhaps a month. When I heard your voice I can't tell what I thought—a dread—a terror of something terrible—something supernatural, I mean, came over me."
"But what could have taken you out of doors on a night like this?" he persisted.
She did not hesitate; she hurried to answer, but it was like a person repeating words studied for the occasion, and all the while her two hands clutched hard at the arm of the sofa.
"I don't know what drove me out, the storm made me wild. I thought of the sea—you on it, perhaps—I don't know why I went."
"You are wet," he said—"thoroughly drenched. You must change your dress."
She seemed to grasp at the opportunity to go away, and started up with such eagerness that his suspicious eyes noticed it.