coloured cushions. She was crying not only because Vessons had come off victorious, but because her position was now defined, and was not what she would have liked, but also because Reddin's manner to her jarred after last night.

Last night, in the comfortless darkness of Hunter's Spinney, he had seemed for a little while to be a fellow-fugitive of hers, one of the defenceless, fleeing from the vague, unknown power that she feared. Then she had pitied him—self-forgetfully, fiercely—gathered his head to her breast as she so often gathered Foxy's. But now he seemed to have forgotten—seemed once more to be of the swift and strong ones that rode down small creatures.

She sobbed afresh.

'Look here, Hazel,' said he, in a tone that he intended to be kind but firm—'look here: I'm not angry with you, only you must leave Vessons alone, you know.'

'You want that old fellow more than you want me!'

'Don't be silly! He has his uses; you have yours.'

He spoke with a quite unconscious brutality; he voiced the theory of his class and his political party, which tacitly or openly asserted that woman, servants, and animals were in the world for their benefit.

'I'm not grass to be trod on,' said Hazel, 'and if you canna be civil-spoken, I'll go.'

'You can't,' he replied, 'not now.'

She knew it was true, and the knowledge that her own physical nature had proved traitorous to her freedom enraged her the more.

'You can't go,' he went on, coming towards her chair to caress her.
'Shall I tell you why?'
Hazel sat up and looked at him, her eyes gloomy, her forehead red with crying. He thought she was awaiting for his answer; but Hazel seldom did or said what he expected. She let him kneel by her chair on one knee; then, frowning, asked: 'Who cried in Hunter's Spinney?' He jumped up as if he had knelt on a pin. He had been trying to forget the incident, and hoped that she had. He was bitterly ashamed of that really fine moment of his life.

'Don't Hazel!' he said.

He felt quite frightened when he remembered how he had behaved. A strange doubt of himself, born that night, stirred again. Was he all he had thought?