A few minutes dexterous steering among the trees brought them out on to the path she had originally meant to follow, which led directly to the high-road.
Arrived there, Michael stopped short and looked at her consideringly. A little colour, he was glad to see, had returned to her cheeks; there was no longer the ghastly pallor which had made her look as if on the point of fainting.
“She is a strong girl,” he thought to himself, “physically and morally, but she has been through a bad bit of experience. Disillusionment, if it has been that, goes hard with such as she.”
And disillusionment he had reason to suspect it had been.
“Bernard would never have left her alone in this way, selfish as he is, unless he had been made to feel himself very small. As things are, I must risk annoying her by my officiousness; she is not fit to walk farther alone.”
Philippa was unconscious of his scrutiny. She was gazing up and down the road half vaguely.
“Which way—” she was beginning, but Michael interrupted her.
“Miss Raynsworth,” he said, “you mustn’t mind my saying that I really can’t let you go all the way home alone. It is getting dusk, and you own to being very tired.”
“Very well,” said Philippa, simply. “I mean—I should say ‘thank you,’” and again she smiled, and to Michael there was something more pathetic in her smile than if there had been tears in her eyes. “How far is it to Palden? Somehow I am really not as tired as when you first met me.”
“If you don’t mind cross-cuts and skirting one or two ploughed fields,” he said, more lightly, “it need not be more than a mile and a half.”