Till the threatened vitality within again asserted itself; beat off the besieging thoughts; and clutched fiercely at some new proof of its own strength. The old man raised himself, and laid his hand on the telephone which connected his room with that of Faversham.
How, in Dixon's custody, Felicia reached the station, and stumbled into the train, and how, at the other end, she groped her way into the gates of Duddon and began the long woodland ascent to the castle, Felicia never afterward knew. But when she had gone a few steps along the winding drive Where the intermittent and stormy moonlight was barely enough to guide her, she felt her strength suddenly fail her. She could never climb the long hill to the house—she could never fight the wind that was rising in her face. She must sit down, till some one came—to help.
She sank down upon a couch of moss, at the foot of a great oak-tree which was still thick with withered leaf. The mental agitation, and the sheer physical fatigue of her mad attempt had utterly worn out her barely recovered strength. "I shall faint," she thought, "and no one will know where I am!" She tried to concentrate her will on the resolution not to faint. Straightening her back and head against the tree, she clasped her hands rigidly on her knee. From time to time a wave of passionate recollection would rush through her; and her heart would beat so fast, that again the terror of sinking into some unknown infinite would string up her will to resistance. In this alternate yielding and recoil, this physical and mental struggle, she passed minutes which seemed to her interminable. At last resistance was all but overwhelmed.
"Come to me!—oh, do come to me!"
She seemed to be pouring her very life into the cry. But, probably, the words were only spoken in the mind.
* * * * *
A little later she woke up in bewilderment. She was no longer on the moss. She was being carried—carried firmly and speedily—in some one's arms. She tried to open her eyes.
"Where am I?"
A voice said:
"That's better! Don't be afraid. You'd fainted I think. I can carry you quite safely."