Tensely she confronted him. He loomed before her as a wolfish brute, seeking his comfort at this last cost of her pride. . . . But no man, she thought tragically, should ever say that he had spent the night within the same four walls.
She sprang forward, her hands outstretched, then shrank back.
She could not touch him. Not only the perception of the ludicrous folly of matching her strength against his withheld her, but some flaming fury against putting a hand upon a man who had so repudiated her.
Her brain grew alert. Suddenly very intent and collected she stepped aside and Johnny Byrd came in.
Close to the wall she pressed, edging nearer and nearer the door, and as he stumbled and fumbled with the blankets she gave a quick spring and flashed out.
Like mad she ran across the clearing, through a thicket, and out again and away.
On the instant he was after her; she heard his steps crashing behind her but she had the start of her swiftness and the speed of her desperation. Brambles meant nothing to her, nor the thickets nor branches. She flew on and on, lost in the darkness, his shouts growing fainter and fainter in her ears.
At last, in a shrub, she stopped to listen. She could hear nothing. Then came a call—very faint. It came from the wrong direction. She had turned and doubled like a hare and Johnny was pursuing, if he still pursued, a mistaken way.
She was safe . . . and she stood still for a few minutes to quiet her pounding heart and catch her gasping breath, and then she stole out, cautiously, anxiously hurrying, to make her own way down.
She had no idea of time or of distance. Vaguely she felt that it was the middle of the night but that if she were quick, very quick, she might reach the Lodge before it was too disastrously late. She might meet a searching party out for them—there would be searching parties if people were truly worried at their absence.