She raised her eyes to his for a moment in a keen searching glance, then, with a hasty "Good evening," turned and walked away in the direction she had come.
He stood and watched her until she had passed over the brow of the hill in the direction of Trewinion Hall. Then he slowly resumed his journey towards St. Gaved.
That night he awoke from a dream with a feeling of horror tearing at his heart. He dreamed that his great scheme had proved a failure, and that Felix Muller stood over him demanding the immediate fulfilment of the contract.
So vivid had been the dream that, for the moment, he seemed powerless to shake off the impression. He sat up in bed, and stared round him, while a cold perspiration broke out in beads upon his brow.
For the first time he realised, in any clear and vivid sense, the nature of the compact he had entered into. The possibilities of failure had seemed so infinitely remote that he had never seriously tried to realise what failure would mean.
Now that awful contingency forced itself upon his heart and imagination in a way that seemed almost to paralyse him. It was as though some invisible but powerful hand had pushed him to the edge of a dark and awful precipice, and compelled him to look over. His knees shook under him, his head seemed to reel, he struggled to get back to safer ground.
The feeling of horror passed away after a few minutes, and he lay down again.
"Of course, I shall not fail," he said to himself. "The contingency is so remote that I need not give the matter a second thought."
And yet the impression of that dream was destined to remain with him in spite of all his efforts to shake it off.