[63] [63] "I hope to Heaven I haven't misjudged you," he said, with the first trace of anxiety she had yet heard in his voice. "If you should be the kind of girl who's afraid of the dark—" The straw rustled as she curled herself more comfortably in her nest. "I'm not afraid," she said. "Look here," said he, "here's my match-box, but don't strike a light among the straw. The door into the house is locked and the key's on this side of the door. Can you come to the back door and lock it after me, and then find your way back to your nest?" "Yes," she said, and felt her way past the big copper to the door. "Sure you're not frightened?" "Quite," said she. "Then I'll go," said he, and went. She locked the door and crept back to the straw. He waited till its crackling told him that she had found her way back to her couch. Then he started for Jevington. And as he went he told himself that she was right. She had been mad to come, and he had been mad to let her come. But there was no going back now. There was no looking back, even. From the brow of the hill the road was down-hill all the[64] way, and he ran, his rubber shoes patting almost noiselessly in the dust. At his inn the bolt yielded to his knife-point's pressure, the well-oiled lock let him in without a murmur, the stairs hardly creaked more than stairs can creak in their dark solitudes when we lie awake and listen to them and wonder. . . . The night was as silent as a thought, and when at last the silence was shattered by the clatter of hoofs and the jangle of harness, Mr. Basingstoke's head turned a little on his pillow, not restlessly. [64] He heard the clanging bell echo in the flagged passage; heard through the plaster walls the heavy awakening of his host, the scrape of a match, the hasty, blundering toilet; heard the big bar dropped from the front door; voices—the groom's voice, the host's voice, the aunt's voice.
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