She wrenched one arm free and pushed away, her eyes wide, for the horror of him had dawned slowly.
“Oh!” she gasped. “You!”
As he seized her again, she drew back, mad with fear, shrunken within herself, like a snake in a thicket coiling itself to thrust and then struck viciously.
He felt the impact of a blow full in the face and staggered back releasing her. And her accents, sharp, cruel, vicious, clove the silence like sword-cuts.
“You cad! You brute! You utter brute!”
He came forward like a blind man, mumbling incoherently, but she avoided him easily, and fled.
“Jane!” he called hoarsely. “Come back to me, Jane. Come back to me! Oh, God!”
He stumbled and fell; then rose again, putting his hands to his face and running heavily toward the spot where she had vanished into the bushes—the very spot where three days ago she had appeared to him. He caught a glimpse of her ahead of him and blundered on, calling for forgiveness. There was no reply but the echo of his own voice, nor any glimpse of her. After that he remembered little, except that he went on and on, tripping, falling, tearing his face and clothes in the briars, getting to his feet and going on again, mad with the terror of losing her—an instinct only, an animal in search of its wounded mate.
He did not know how long he strove or how far, but there came a time when he fell headlong among some boulders and could rise no more.