“Let me go home, there is a storm coming, and I am so tired.” She spoke like a frightened child.
He answered mechanically like a man in deep thought.
“Poor little one, yes, yes, at once.” He was holding his watch in his hand, and looking over her shoulder down the hill side, measuring time against distance. He was thinking there would still be a chance—his wife might have gone on sleeping. If he could only get back to the room in time? and he muttered to himself, absorbed in his sudden desire to get back before it was too late.
“Yes,” he said, “we must go down before the storm breaks. Come, darling,” and he led the way down the winding path rapidly.
When they reached the road, he said—
“Can you go home alone? You will be quite safe on the road, and I have something to do—very important, terribly important. I must go. Let me see you to-morrow. I will come, may I? Good-bye! good-bye! Poor child, you look so tired.” He put his hands gently on either side of her face, looking into her eyes.
“Remember your promise!” he said, and kissed her lips passionately; then, as if some invisible force had plucked him from her, he turned suddenly and walked along the road at full speed, his head bent down, and without once looking back.
Jocelyn gazed after him surprised and trembling. The tide of her emotions had run out and left her spent and heavy with a sense of coming disaster.
CHAPTER XV
Once hidden by a group of trees, Giles broke into a run. The road stared in front of him, white and implacable; the dust rose from it, choking him. He bent forward, lifting his feet doggedly, dead tired, and with the feeling that he would never get to the villa. There was a lull in the wind, and a few splashes of warm rain fell upon him.