No footmarks were visible.
Remsen cried out, with the shock of his dismay. He cast about him on all sides. No result.
Struggling to keep cool, he turned back, going slowly, careful to miss no trace which intent scrutiny might discover. A quarter of a mile back he picked up the trail where she had left the road to cross a brooklet and take to the open fields. Her object he guessed; to cut across a broad and heavily wooded hill, thus saving herself some two miles of travel where the road took a wide double curve.
Eased in his breathing by the enforced slowness of the search, he was now able to accelerate his pace. Halfway up the open hillside a sudden fury of storm descended, lapping him in whirling darkness. Ahead of him stretched the dead-black line of woodland. More by luck than direction, he came upon a gateway, and thus set foot to the forest path, less difficult to discern in such conditions than the open trail of the meadows. With his light he could follow it quite easily. But when he thought of Darcy, lightless and inexperienced in woodcraft, with only her strength and her courage to help her, wandering in that wilderness, his spirit sickened with terror. The numbed fingers of the hand which gripped the flash warned him of dropping temperature. One might easily freeze on such a night, in the open. Worst of all, the marks in the snow were now all but invisible under the fresh fall.
He blundered desperately onward, shouting her name into the gale as he went. There was an answering call. He threw his light on. She rose from a fallen tree-trunk into the arc of radiance.
“I’ve been lost,” she said, and walked straight to his arms.
Just for the comfort and safety and relief of it she clung to him, with no other or further thought than that where he was no harm could reach her. But now that she was found, Remsen’s self-control broke under the reaction. His arms closed about her. With a shock of sweetness, amazement, and terror she felt his lips on hers—and answered them. For the briefest instant only. The thought of Gloria pierced through the rapture of the moment, a poisoned dart. She thrust herself back from him, her hands on his breast.
“Go away!” she sobbed. “You’ve no right. You know you’ve no right!”
As she had thought of Gloria, so now he thought of the Briton oversea, fighting in his country’s service.
“I know,” he groaned. “Forgive me.”