He seemed to be in a state of waking nightmare.
He was stung into impetuous action by seeing the policeman halt and exchange some words with the girl.

He began to run, with the quite definite if equally mad intent of punching Robinson into reasonable behavior.

He was saved from an act of unmitigated folly by the girl herself.

She caught sight of him, apparently broke off her talk with the policeman abruptly, and, in her turn, took to her heels.
Thus, on that strip of sun-baked road, with its easy gradient to the crown of the bridge, there was the curious spectacle offered by two men jogging along with a corpse on a stretcher, a young man and a young woman running towards each other, and a discomfited representative of the law, looking now one way and now the other, and evidently undecided whether to go on or return.

Ultimately, it would seem, Robinson went with the stretcher-bearers, because Grant and the girl saw no more of him for the time.
Grant had received several shocks since rising from the breakfast-table, but it was left for Doris Martin, the postmaster's daughter, to administer not the least surprising one.
Though almost breathless, and wide-eyed with horror, her opening words were very much to the point.
"How awful!" she cried.