Then as she came, still headlong, to the river, she heard Harding's voice saying something, she did not know what. She couldn't stop to listen to him, or to consider how he came to be there in the valley, when a minute ago she had seen him by the edge of the wood, up on the very top of the hill.
He was on the bridge—the Farm bridge—now. He held out his hand to steady her as she came on over the swinging plank.
She knew that he had led her to the other side, and that he was standing there, still saying something, and that she answered.
"Have you no pity on me? Can't you let me go?"
And then she broke from him and ran.
HE was awake all that night. Harding Powell and the horror begotten of him had no pity; he would not let her go. Her gift, her secret, was powerless now against the pursuer.
She had a light burning in her room till morning, for she was afraid of sleep. Those unlit roads down which, if she slept, the Thing would surely hunt her, were ten times more terrible than the white-washed, familiar room where it merely watched and waited.