But she paid no heed to the warning. Quiet! That was what she most feared. It was from that ominous silence she was flying, and from the moment when it would reveal the mystery of her own heart. Rather than that silence, that revelation, better to gallop on and on until exhaustion numbed sensibility, hushed every stirring, unfathomed desire into a torpor of indifference! She felt at first no fear. The power to check her wild course had long since passed out of her hands, but she neither knew nor cared. She saw the forest rush by in a blurred, bewildering mist, and far behind heard the muffled thunder of horse's hoofs in hot pursuit. But she saw and heard as in some fantastic dream whose end lay in the weaving hands of an implacable Destiny. In that same dream a shadow crept up to her side, drew nearer till they were abreast; a grip of iron fell upon her bridle hand. Then for the first time she awoke and understood. And with understanding came fear. Her own grip upon the straining reins relaxed. She reeled weakly in the saddle, thinking, "This is indeed the end." But the shock for which she dimly waited did not come. Instead, miraculously supported, she saw the mists clear and trees and earth and sky slip back to their places before her eyes. The world, which for one moment had seemed to be rushing to its destruction, stood motionless, and Nora found herself in the saddle, held there by the strength she would have recognised, so it seemed to her, even if it had caught her up out of the midst of death. Arnim's face was bent close to hers, and its expression filled her with pity and a joy wonderful and inexplicable.
"Wie haben Sie mir das anthun können?" he stammered, and then, in broken, passionate English, "How could you? If anything had happened—do you not know what it would have meant to me?" With a hard effort he regained his self-possession and let her go. "You frightened me terribly," he said. "I—I am sorry."
"You have saved my life," she answered. "It is I who have to be sorry—that I frightened you."
She was smiling with a calm strangely in contrast to his painful but half-mastered agitation. The suspense of the last minutes was still visible in his white face, and the hand which he raised mechanically to his cap shook.
"It was Bauer's fault," he said. "He rode like a madman. I shall call him to account. We seem fated to cross each other."
"Then why call him to account—since it is Fate? After all, nothing has happened."
Had, indeed, nothing happened? She avoided his eyes, and the colour died from her cheeks.
"Let us go home," he said abruptly.
They walked their panting horses back the way they had come. As before, neither spoke. To all appearances nothing had changed between them, and yet the change was there. The sunlight had broken through the mists, the oppressive silence was gone, and life stirred in the long grasses, peered with wondering, timid eyes from amidst the shadows, where deer and squirrel and all the peaceful forest world watched and waited until the intruders had passed on and left them to their quiet. And in Nora's heart also the sun had risen. The chaos had resolved itself into calm; and though so long as the man with the pale, troubled face rode at her side she could give no account even to herself of the mysterious happiness which had come so suddenly and so strangely, she was yet content to wait and enjoy her present peace without question.
Thus they passed out of the gates and through the busy streets, Arnim riding close to her side, as though to shield her from every possible danger. But the silence between them remained unbroken. It was the strangest thing of all that, though throughout they had scarcely spoken, more had passed between them than in all the hours of the gay and serious comradeship they had spent together.