"Oh, no. Not to follow you, my friend. Me. You are merely the bone of contention. I am the impudent terrier who has interfered with the peace of her repast."
"Impossible. She doesn't even know you're out of Paris. How can she know?"
"Now you're delving into the intricacies of the feminine mind—an occupation to which you're as little suited as Clarissa—and she's a woman. You must take my word for it. Olga has often amazed me by the accuracy of her intuitions. I have imagined that where her own interests were involved they would be nothing short of miraculous. She is quite as sure that I am your companion moment as though she had seen me in the Signor Cleofonte's roulotte."
"Then if she is so sure," he asked with excellent logic, "why should she make so much bother about it?"
Hermia laughed. "The mere fact that she is making a bother about it is significance in itself. She'll find me if she can and confront me with the damning fact of your presence in my society."
"And precious little good that would do her," he put in rather brutally.
"Or me," said Hermia gravely. "Hell hath no hatred—et cetera. You've spurned her, Philidor,—in spirit, if not in letter. Get her the chance and she will pillory me in the market-place."
Markham went along in silence, his earlier impressions confirmed by argument, sure that the chance of discovery must be avoided at all hazards. A watch of the road had revealed no sign of the stealthy chauffeur, but that argued nothing. He was an obstinate little animal, evidently quite capable, since his discomfiture, of following the adventure through to its end. They must outmaneuver him. Presently Markham discovered what he had been looking for—a path hardly perceptible in the darkness, which led through the bushes and promised immunity. They followed it silently, pausing for a while to listen for sounds of pursuit, and at last, with minds relieved, if not quite certain, plodded on into the obscurity. They had entered, it seemed, an aisle of a forest which stretched, darkly impenetrable, on either side. Before them, blackness, darkness within dark, like a cave, a smell of dampness like a dungeon. The sky lightened for a moment and they saw the shape of leaves and tree fronds far above them like a pattern on a carpet—a pattern which changed with elflike witchery, for a wind had blown up and sounded about them with the roar of a distant sea, rising now and then in a mighty crescendo, like the boom of a nearer wave upon the shore. The tree tops swayed and joined in the splendid diapason. Nature breathed deeply.
Markham led the way, his hand upon Clarissa's bridle, peering along their slender trail, while Hermia, all her senses keenly alive to the witchery of the night, followed closely, casting timorous glances over her shoulder into the murky gloom, in which she fancied she could discern the shapes of pursuers. Once thinking she had heard a sound behind her, she caught Markham's arm and they stopped, breathless, and listened, but they heard nothing in the rushing blackness but the complaint of an owl and the crash of a dead limb at a distance to their right. A drop of rain fell on Markham's hand. Their prospect was not pleasant. Markham struck a match under his coat and looked at his watch. It was one o'clock. They had been walking for four hours. He tried to focus his eyes upon the blackness. This path must lead somewhere—a shed even would serve them if it rained harder. The brief glimpse he had of Hermia's face showed it pale and dark-eyed with a look he had never discovered in it before, not of fear, for fear he had begun to believe was foreign to her. The light had cut them off for a moment from the rest of the world, or rather had made more definite the little world of their own, but Hermia's eyes still peered over her shoulder, distended and alert. She was on the defensive, ready for headlong flight, like a naiad startled.
"I'm sorry, Hermia. You're dead tired—aren't you?"