The head was lifted immediately, defiantly.
"Oh, I know what I am going to do. I have done with thinking. I am going to marry Geoff."
"But 'ow are yer goin' to work the trick, so sudden like, without 'im wonderin' what's in yer mind?"
"That's where you've got to help me. I don't see quite how to do it alone. With your aid it will be wickedly easy for me to—to deceive him, because he trusts me so entirely. Ah well! Now listen to my plan...."
Tired of her low seat, she drew up a chair close to Philia.
Long they sat into the night, arranging, discussing, even rehearsing what was to be done on the morrow. At length they separated, but slumber was not for Evarne. No sooner had she laid her weary head upon the pillow than there came to her from the distance the steady throb, throb of machinery.
"What can that be?" she mused fretfully. "There's no factory about here, and if there were, why should it be working in the middle of the night?" She rose up on her elbow to listen; the sound ceased. Once more she sought repose; the steady, distant beating recommenced. "I couldn't sleep at the best of times through that persistent noise," she sighed.
Then she seemed to hear cautious footsteps within her room. For a moment every muscle of her body contracted with terror, and the thud of the distant engines increased in volume tenfold. Starting up, she struck a match. The room was empty. As she lay down once more she realised the meaning of all these strange, inexplicable sounds. Those steps, that dull, steady throbbing, all originated within her own tortured brain.
Repeatedly through that night of wakefulness she could have believed she heard movements, even whispers, within the room. She lay on the borderland of slumber, against her will composing endless appeals to Geoff, begging for mercy, for forgiveness, for continued love, going over and over the pleas she might have uttered to Morris but had neglected.
"If I could sleep—oh, if I could only sleep!" she cried wearily.