She wrung her hands. "I think it was on my right," she said.
He took the right-hand turn without more ado, and they hurried along the road for some minutes. At length her steps began to flag. "I must be wrong," she faltered. "I must be wrong! Oh, why," she cried, "why did I leave her?" And she stood.
"Courage!" he answered. "I see a rising ground on the left. And there's a house on it. We ought to have taken the other turning. Now we are here we had better cross the open. Shall I lift you over the ditch, child? Or shall I leave you and go on?"
But she scrambled into the ditch and out again; on the other side the two set off running with one accord, across an open field, dim and shadowy, that stretched away to the foot of the ascent. Soon he outpaced her, and she fell to walking. "Go on!" she panted bravely. "On, on, I will follow!"
He nodded, and clutching his stick by the middle, he lengthened his stride. She saw him come to a blurred line at the foot of the hill, and heard him break through the fence. Then the darkness that lay on the hither slope of the hill--for the moon was beginning to decline--swallowed him, and she walked on more slowly. Each moment she expected to hear a cry, an oath, the sudden clash of arms would break the silence of the night.
But the silence held; and still silence. And now the fence brought her up also; and she stood waiting, trembling, listening, in a prolongation of suspense almost intolerable. At length, unable to bear it longer, she pushed her way into the hedge, and struggled, panting through it; and was starting to clamber up the ascent on the other side when a dark form loomed beside her.
It was her companion. What had happened?
"We are wrong," he muttered. "It's a clump of trees, not a house. And there are clouds coming up to cover the moon. Let us return to the road while we can, my girl."
But this was too much. At this, the last of many disappointments, the girl's courage snapped, as a rush snaps. With a wild outburst of weeping, she flung herself down on the sloping ground, and rubbed her face in the grass, and tore the soil with her fingers in an agony of abandonment. "Oh, I left her! I left her!" she wailed, when sobs allowed words to pass. "I left her, and saved myself. And she's dead! Oh, why didn't I stay with her? Why didn't I stay with her?"
The young man listened awhile, awkward, perturbed; when he spoke his voice was husky. "'Tis no use," he said peevishly. "No use, child! Don't--don't go on like this! See here, you'll have a fever, if you lie there. You will, I know," he repeated.