“You’ll be safe, Marie,” he whispered. “It’ll be only for a little while, now. You’ll be safe till I come.” An ineffably peaceful smile flickered across his face. “We couldn’t forget––why, of course, we couldn’t forget––you and I!”
With the short black skirt lifted even higher above her ankles that she might make still more speed, Dryad turned into the dark path that twisted crookedly through the brush to the open clearing beside the brook and from there on to the black house on the hill.
She ran swiftly, madly, through the darkness, with the wild, panic-stricken, headlong abandon of a hunted thing, finding the narrow trail ahead of her by instinct alone. Only once she overran it, but that once a low hanging branch, face high, caught her full across the forehead and sent her crashing back in the underbrush. Just once she put one narrow foot in its loosely flapping shoe into the deep crevice between two rocks and gasped aloud with the pain of the fall that racked her knees. When she groped out and steadied herself erect she was talking––stammering half incoherent words that came bursting jerkily from her lips as she tore on.
“Help me ... in time ... God,” she panted, “Just this once ... get to him ... in time. Lord, 51 forgive ... own vanity. Oh, God, please in time!”
Small feet drumming the harder ground, she flashed up the last rise and across the yard to the door of that unlighted kitchen. Her hands felt for the latch and failed to find it; then she realized that it was already open––the door––but her knees, all the strength suddenly drained from them at the black quiet in that room, refused to carry her over the threshold. She rocked forward, reaching out with one hand for the frame to steady herself, and in that same instant the man who lay a huddled motionless heap across the table top, moved a little and began to speak aloud.
“They didn’t want me,” he muttered, and the words came with muffled thickness. “Not even for the strength of my shoulders.”
She took one faltering step forward––the girl who stood there swaying in the doorway––and stopped again. And the man lifted his head and laughed softly, a short, ugly rasping laugh.
“Not even for the work I could do,” he finished.
And then she understood. She tried to call out to him, and the words caught in her throat and choked her. She tried again and this time her voice rang clear through the room.
“Denny,” she cried, “Denny, I’ve come to you! Strike a light! I’m here, Denny, and––oh, I’m afraid––afraid of the dark!”