Take your shoes and stockings with you until we are out of the bush." He raised her again in his arms and strode once more out through the covert into the dim aisles of the wood.

They spoke but little; she could not help feeling that some other discordant element, affecting him more strongly than it did her, had come between them, and was half perplexed and half frightened.

At the end of ten minutes he seated her upon a fallen branch, and telling her he would return by the time she had resumed her shoes and stockings glided from her like a shadow.

She would have uttered an indignant protest at being left alone, but he was gone ere she could detain him.

For a moment she thought she hated him.