"I wish you'd go to the bridge yonder and get me some water to drink. Your tobacco pouch will do if you rinse it well, as you often have upon the Moor. I'm frantically thirsty."
"My dear child—wait until we get home. Then you've promised me to drink some wine."
"No, I can't wait; I'm parched and I want the river water. To please me, Myles. It won't take you a moment—straight between the trees there, to that old bridge of ash poles. That's the nearest way. I must drink—really I must. It's unkind to refuse."
He grumbled a little and declared what with the dropping trees, she might have enough water; but then he saw her face in the moonlight, and she kissed him, and he departed to do her bidding.
The rustic bridge, crossed by Honor at the outset of this record, was a structure but seldom used save by gamekeepers. It spanned Teign some seventy yards away from the great tree; but Myles, who did not know the spot well, found that he must now cross a tangled underwood to reach the river. The place was difficult by night, and he proceeded with caution, emptying the tobacco out of his pouch into his pocket as he did so. One fall, got from a treacherous briar, he had; then he arrived beside the bridge and noted where faint indication of a woodland path led from it. By following this his return journey promised to be the easier. Myles knelt and scrambled to the brink, sweetened the rubber pouch and filled it as well as he could with water. He had, however, scarcely regained his feet when a shrill scream of fear twice repeated frightened the dreaming forests from their sleep, rang and reverberated to the depths of the woods, and revealed a sudden echo close at hand that threw back upon its starting-point the deep horror of the cry. For a second Stapledon made no movement, then he charged into the woods and tore his way back to the road. There he arrived a minute later, torn and bleeding. The pony stood unmoved, but Honor had disappeared. As Myles looked wildly about him, it seemed that in her fearful expression of sudden terror his wife had vanished away. Then, amid the dark spaces of shadow and the silver interspaces of light he found her, lying with the moon upon her white face and one small hand still clutching a few bluebells. She had fallen midway between the carriage and the great beech; she had been stricken senseless by some physical catastrophe or mental shock.
The man groaned aloud before what he saw, dropped down on his knees beside her, gathered her up gently, and uttered a thousand endearing words; but her head fell forward without life towards him, and setting her down, he gathered the wet, shining moss and pressed it about her forehead and neck and unfastened the buttons at her throat. Great terror came upon him as she still remained unconscious, and he picked her up to carry her back to the carriage. Then she moved and opened her eyes and stretched her hands to him; whereupon, in his turn, he cried aloud and thanked God.
As she began to apprehend, to order the broken tangles of thought and take up again the threads so suddenly let fall, he feared that she would faint once more, for with return of memory there came a great wave of terror over her eyes; but she only clung to him and breathed with long, deep gasps of fear, yet said no word. Then it seemed that a physical pang distracted her mind from the immediate past; a strange, bewildered look crossed her upturned face, and she bowed herself and pressed her hand into her side and moaned.
"Oh, I was a mad fool to do this!" he cried. "I am to blame for it all. Let me drive—back through Godleigh. That's nearest. We've the right, though we never use it. Say you're better now."
But she could not answer yet, and he made the pony gallop forward until it crossed the bridge over Teign, then turned into the private park-lands beyond.
Presently Honor spoke.