"Like it?" said Nick; and with a start she saw him coolly step out from a shadowy path behind them and close the great iron gate.
Impulsively she pulled up and slipped to the ground. "Take my horse,
Blake," she said. "I must run down to that stream."
He obeyed her, not very willingly, and Nick with a chuckle turned and plunged after her down the narrow path. "Go straight ahead!" he called back. "Olga is waiting for you at the house."
He came up with Muriel on the edge of the fairy stream. Her face was flushed and her eyes nervous, but she met him bravely. She had known in her heart that he would follow. As he stopped beside her, she turned with a little desperate laugh and held out her hand.
"Is it peace?" she said rather breathlessly.
She felt his fingers, tense as wire, close about her own. "Seems like it," he said. "What are you afraid of? Me?"
She could not meet his look. But the necessity for some species of understanding pressed upon her. She wanted unspeakably to conciliate him.
"I want to be friends with you, Nick," she said, "if you will let me."
"What for?" said Nick sharply.
She was silent. She could not tell him that her sure defence had crumbled at a touch. Somehow she was convinced that he knew it already.