"If I don't take care I shall be lost utterly, and shall have to spend the night, alone with the birds and beasts, in this sweet wilderness. Sensible people would take advantage of the first chance which offers to turn back. But I sha'n't; I shall go on and on."
Presently the opportunity to do so came again. The moon returned; this time to stay. It seemed brighter now. As her eyes became accustomed to its peculiar glamour she moved more surely towards the goal she had in view. The light, the scene, the hour, were all three fitted to her mood; which certainly would have defied her own analysis. It seemed to her, by degrees, that she was bewitched--under the influence of some strange spell. This was a fairy forest through which she was passing, at the witching hour. Invisible shapes walked by her. Immaterial forms peopled the air. It was as though she was one of a great company; moving with an aerial bodyguard through a forest of faerie.
What it all meant she did not know; or why she was there; or whither, exactly, she was going. Until, on a sudden, the knowledge came.
Unexpectedly, before she supposed she had gone so far, she came to the end of the path. There, right ahead, was the mossy glade, the fee-simple of which had been presented to her in such queer fashion the last time she came that way. Coming from the shadow of the forest path it stood out in the full radiance of the moon; every object showing out as clearly as at high noon. The new-made fence, with its novelty already fading; the turf on which she loved to lie; the unevenness on the slope which had seemed to have been made for the express purpose of providing cushions for her head and back. These things she saw, as distinctly as if the sun were high in the heavens; and something else she saw as well, which made her heart stand still.
Under the giant beech, whose spreading branches cast such grateful shade, when the sun was hot, over the nook which she had chosen as a couch, stood a man--who was himself by way of being a giant. Never before had his height so struck her. Whether it was the clothes he wore, the position in which he stood, or a trick of the moonlight, she could not tell. She only knew that, as he appeared so instantly before her, he was like some creature out of Brobdingnag, seeming to fill all space with his presence.
The man was Hugh Morice.
He was so absorbed in what he was doing, and she was still some little distance from him, and had come so quietly; that she saw him while he still remained unconscious of her neighbourhood. She had ample time to withdraw. She had only to take a few steps back, and he would never know she had been near him. So the incident would be closed. Her instinct told her that in that way she would be safest. And for a moment or two she all but turned to go.
Her retreat, however, was delayed by one or two considerations. One was that the sight of him affected her so strangely that, for some seconds, she was genuinely incapable of going either backward or forward. Her feet seemed shod with lead, her knees seemed to be giving way beneath her, she was trembling from head to foot. Then she was divided between conflicting desires, the one saying go, the other stay; and while her instinct warned her to do the one, her inclination pointed to the other. In the third place there was her woman's curiosity. While she hesitated this began to gain the upper hand. She wondered what it was he was doing which absorbed him so completely that he never ceased from doing it to look about him.
He was in a dinner suit, and was apparently hatless. He had something in his hand, with which he was doing something to the tree in front of which he stood. What was he doing? She had no right to ask; she had no right to be there at all; still--she wondered. She moved a little farther out into the open space, to enable her to see. As she did so it seemed that he finished what he was doing. Standing up straight he drew back from the tree the better to enable him to examine his handiwork; and--then he turned and saw her.
There was silence. Neither moved. Each continued to look at the other, as if at some strange, mysterious being. Then he spoke.