There was something that Mary wished to learn, and a question presently revealed it.
"What made him start on a long walk so suddenly ?" she asked.

"I saw him at eleven o'clock, and then he meant to go to Engelberg, and sleep." "On his way to Interlaken ?" Rowland said.
"Yes," she answered, under cover of the darkness.
"We had some talk," said Rowland, "and he seemed, for the day, to have given up Interlaken." "Did you dissuade him ?" "Not exactly.

We discussed another question, which, for the time, superseded his plan." Miss Garland was silent.

Then--"May I ask whether your discussion was violent ?" she said.
"I am afraid it was agreeable to neither of us." "And Roderick left you in--in irritation ?" "I offered him my company on his walk.

He declined it." Miss Garland paced slowly to the end of the gallery and then came back.
"If he had gone to Engelberg," she said, "he would have reached the hotel before the storm began." Rowland felt a sudden explosion of ferocity.