TO Florence everything—leaf, and wind, and the movement of her own blood—seemed to stop and harken to his steps going from her. To him the power and procession of incident were suddenly precipitated in a rending confusion, in which established custom was uprooted, faith cast down, self-confidence shaken to bits.

What went on around him had lost significance. He was among people, talking to people, looking at Florence across the table; but in this blind rage of suffering he was as indifferent to all external things as if he had been alone.

Neither Julia nor Bessie Lewis had appeared at luncheon. Julia had sent word that she would be late, to her mother’s absent-minded distraction. Mrs. Budd’s desire to rush away and fetch her fluttered before the faces of her guests like a flag of distress. In the end she was deflected by an imperative telephone that caught her just as her guests were rising. While they loitered between the dining-room and living-hall, chatting in groups, Julia, with Bessie Lewis at her heels, came down the stairs, habited, hatted, booted, drawing on her gloves, her riding-whip under her arm.

She was pale, but singularly vivid. Her dark eyes gleamed under her thick brows. Her red lips were tight and thin.

Florence, looking quickly at Longacre, hated the presence descending the stairs.

“Oh, I say, young madam,” Thair protested, amused; “it won’t do, you know. You’re going to break your neck.”

“You aren’t coming!” she laughed at him, though he was in his pinks. “But Mr. Holden is!”

“Here, here!” Holden protested, shaking his head, half serious. “Don’t misquote me!”

“But we’re all going!” she cried, with a look straight at Longacre. “There are the horses!” She was buoyant. “Are two women going to ride cross-country alone?” she mocked them.

“By gad!” murmured Holden in stark admiration for such daring.

Julia turned on Longacre. “Are you ready?” she said.

He stared. Then—“Not for this,” he answered briefly.

“Oh!” Her look again was diabolical. “Are you the man who wasn’t afraid this morning?”

“Did you accept the offer?”

“If I didn’t—” her red lips curled over her teeth—“I do now!”

“You’ll break your neck!”

“My neck!” She began laughing, as if that were something superlatively ridiculous. There was a contagion of recklessness in the sound of it. She leaned a little nearer and shook her head at him.

“My neck is worth at least two fences! And yours?”

“Oh, not that much!” It was an answering spirit.

“Then come!” she cried. “We’ll lead them!”

A quick step hurrying from the dining-room, and Mrs. Budd’s emphatic voice was lifted.

“Where did those horses come from?” The tone expressed mere general wonder to the aggregation in the hall, that quickened to personal apprehension at sight of her daughter equipped for the saddle.

“Why, Julia!” she began. Then seeing Bessie Lewis, she hesitated, dismayed.

“We’re just off, mama!” cried Julia. “I told James to have the cart ready to drive you over to the ‘finish.’”

“Off? Over?” Mrs. Budd helplessly questioned.

“Why, the drag—the drag-hunt!” her daughter exclaimed. “You haven’t forgotten our great event!”

“The drag-hunt! My dear child! Why, you’re crazy!” Mrs. Budd’s hands were eloquent of horror. “Mr. Thair—Mr. Holden! Surely—why, it’s impossible!”

Thair repudiating all part in the proceeding, Holden struggling for neutral ground, Mrs. Budd adjuring them to a firm stand with her against this harebrained escapade, a confusion of voices began. Bessie Lewis wavered in the face of her hostess’s vehemence. In the midst of the indecision Julia, who had been standing, her teeth on her under lip, her crop slashing at her boots, suddenly recommanded the situation.

“Well, I’m off!” she cried. “See you again at the ‘kill!’”

She caught up her riding-skirt, and ran across the hall and down the step. Longacre was after her. He felt a horrid responsibility for this mad bravado.

Her foot hardly pressed his hand as she sprang into the saddle.

Mrs. Budd clasped Thair’s arm.

“Bring her back! Oh, bring her back!” she entreated.

“Safe and sound—no danger,” he reassured her.

“Pretty rapid for the start,” he smiled to Holden, as he tucked up Bessie Lewis on an excited mare. “Can you hit the pace?”

“I’m with you,” Holden muttered, straddling a dancing bay. “Can’t let ’em go alone!”

They galloped in the wake of the mad riders. Julia’s habit fluttered at the front. The reckless spirit of her rose with the swinging pace. Just through the gate she wheeled left into a wagon-track over fields, a shortcut to the meet; Longacre followed, a neck behind. The rest, going at a more discreet pace, stuck to the sea road, so that the two reached the meet some few moments ahead, and waited, without a word to each other, with the few pink coats, among a yelping pack in a meadow ruffled over by the wind, ringed by live-oaks and somber cypresses. The others came pounding in, breaking through the trees in a rush of voices and color.

“Too far ahead of the procession!” cried Holden.

“You can follow as fast as you please,” called Julia.

“Oh, we follow, princess, we follow!” drawled Thair; “but don’t make the way too steep.”

The pink coats gave curious glances at Longacre’s bare head and golf attire.

The uncoupled hounds scattered over the field, nuzzling through the wet, brown grass, till, with a short yelp from one throat and a long howl from thirty, they had the scent and were off. The field was bunched at the start, Longacre well up with Julia, who was riding hard for the lead.

The going was heavy, and for this the bars were down, but the girl rode straight at the fence. Her black mare sank over fetlock on the other side, but was away with a bare instant lost, a nose behind Longacre, who, with the rest, had taken the open gate.

“If you do that again,” he shouted, “I’ll lead you!”

She laughed and spurred away from him.

The M. F. H., with a dismayed look at her, was protesting to Thair, who shrugged. There was no help for it, he seemed to say.

The girl’s hat, crammed over her eyes, pressed the hair to a close sweep low above her brows. Her nostrils dilated, her color burned. The riders strung out, Holden drawing abreast Julia, Longacre dropping back a length to Thair’s pace.

“Easier going presently, I trust,” the latter said, as his horse sank an off leg. “Look at the dogs,” he added, as the pack darted away in a course almost at right angles to their first. “We’ll have a run for our money!”

“Stiff going?” said Longacre, watching the black mare drawing up on the M. F. H.

“Ground gets better; fences, ditches, worse; the neck-breaking course of the country.” Thair, craning forward, laughed at Julia. “The filly’s got the bit in her teeth. Cruel going—got to see it through somehow!”

He took the other side of a mire and edged away to the left, seeking the narrowest place in the nearing ditch. It looked easy, a tiny gully swollen full by the rains. But Longacre knew how the banks, under-eaten by water, would not give firm footing to a dog. Julia rode at it as if it were a crack in a rock. Holden, who was having his first experience cross-country, slacked a little; but Longacre crowded forward, reckless of the boggy ground.

“Take it long—long!” he entreated. Her eyes flashed at him.

“Are you afraid?” she cried.

The horses rose together. His went over like a swallow. The black mare jumped short. One hind foot went down, but hands and voice and Kentucky blood lifted her out with hardly a struggle.

Holden’s bay had refused the leap. Another had floundered badly. Thair’s pink coat was sailing along the lower field toward a break in the brush fence.

“Shall we lead him?” said Julia, pointing on with her whip.

“For God’s sake, go carefully!” he entreated.

It seemed to delight her to torment him. She pressed forward, looking back with a challenge. Her lips, parted in the ardor of excitement, showed a cruel white of teeth. The ground was precarious, but she rode headlong. It was courting destruction.

He kept her pace, not in response to her reckless spirit, but for fear of what might happen, with the desperate hope of averting disaster. They flew down the field toward the thunder of the sea, with the sun and the salt wind strong in their eyes; crashed through the hedge; scrambled down into a road, up the sandy bank on the other side, through the scrub-oaks with a rush, and at once the salt-meadows were before them, their skirts of cypress black on a purple sea. Over the ocean a white arm of fog extended stealthily. Its thin forefinger pointed landward. Already the first films were caught on ragged pine and crooked cypress, like flying shreds of veil.

“That’ll cut us short,” said Thair, frowning seaward.

“It won’t be in till night,” said Julia, pricking her mare till the creature bounded.

“In an hour,” Thair decided. “We won’t make the cypress plantation.”

She spurred forward. “We’ll finish by five,” she called back. “We can ride through a hedge—we can ride through a mist.”

“A ditch in a fog,” muttered Thair. “Not me!”

“We can ride like the devil and get through!” decided the M. F. H. “The damned dogs are off the scent again!”

Below, among the tussocks of the first meadow, the pack were whimpering, mingling, starting off on a false scent—returning, fawning, leaping up on Julia riding to and fro among them. The exasperated whipper-in beat at them. The four other riders came stringing over the rise among the sand-hummocks.

“What’s up?”

“Oh, dear, have they lost the scent?”

They scattered down the dip among the dispersed and nosing pack.

“They have it!”

“No. Fake scent!”

“Why on earth is there such a long break?”—Bessie Lewis’s treble.

“I didn’t carry the drag!” cried Julia, furiously, fretted with the delay. “Loo, loo, loo!” She urged the dogs. “Good heavens! I could find it quicker myself!”

She couldn’t—or wouldn’t—rein the black in to the group gathered in the lee of the dunes, but darted away with swoops and stops beyond the farthest-straying dog.

“Can’t we call it off?” urged Holden, looking anxiously at the encroaching fog. It was spreading out, a thick sheet raveling at the edges.

“Not until we have to!” said Thair, well into his cross-country humor. “But don’t let the young madam get too far ahead.”

Then Longacre—who had never taken his eyes from where Julia glimmered down the somber sward—“They have it! They’re off!” and was away after them.

He heard the rest hot-pace behind, but he had a moment’s advantage, and, having saved his horse between ditch and fence, now drew away fresh as at the start. He had an open course—two miles of sandy turf—to catch her in. She had ridden down near the sea, and, following the pack, now zigzagged up hill. He, hugging the line of the dunes, cut off a corner, and so caught up with her. Hearing him coming, she spurred harder; but he drew up inch by inch, until, his roan abreast her black, they rushed into the face of the wind together.

Hounds in front and hunters behind were forgotten; between the cypresses crowding down from the hills, and the oblivion of fog beating in from sea, they sped, wild with the elation of flight, unmindful of beginning, oblivious of end.

Fog was already streaming among the fantastic trees of the Point of Pines, cutting them off in front; but Julia held an unswerving course until the damp breath blew on her hot cheeks, and moisture stood in pearls in her hair.

The point went back from the sea in a low ridge, running up into a straggling grove of cypress. Its backbone of round, tumbling stones was cruel footing for horses. The pack made nothing of it, slipping over like snakes. Julia was for following, but Longacre turned a sharp flank movement that had the black headed off, flying up the point for the trees, the pack yelping a parallel course on the left of the ridge.

Julia brought her whip down savagely on the black’s flank as she passed him. Longacre took an in-breath as they swept under the trees. The sun through the fine, blowing mist made a dazzle for the eyes.

Over a ground broken and spotted with black stumps the girl guided her horse with admirable skill, Longacre saving his neck by luck. Their pace perforce was slower, dodging the trees that sprang on them out of the mist like specters.

Then, with a hallo, a crashing rush, Thair broke through the scrub on their left. Old rider that he was, he knew the short cuts of every course. He shouted, and they swerved toward him.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he panted.

“After the hounds!” cried Julia.

“The wild juggernaut couldn’t finish this run!” he protested.

“Nonsense!” The girl wheeled her horse. “We’ll be out of the mist when we get away from the point.”

“That you won’t. It’s coming in from the land, too. It’ll be thick in five minutes, and we’ll snag, or break our precious necks on these dwarf-cypresses!”

“We’ll be out in half a minute!” Julia said, shook her reins, and was off.

“Keep Miss Lewis back!” Longacre shouted it over his shoulder.

He heard Thair take up the words and call them again to some dim horseman looming large in the mist.

Already the hounds were a faint cry far in front, the girl a gray wraith flitting among the trees. Now the cypresses had her! Now she flashed into a clearing! Longacre heard hoofs and faint voices behind him, but in that fog, that covered the earth and swallowed the sun, the rider a length ahead of him was the only living creature. Before them the slope slid away into white oblivion. It was madness—this blind flight. He felt himself gaining upon her. His hand was ready for the black’s bit. The thicket opened out; the trees fell away right and left. A dark line swam up in front.

“What’s ahead?” he shouted.

“Fence!” She flung it back at him with a note of fear. The sound of that brought him abreast her. Stark and black, the rails sprang out at him. He saw a glittering mist where the other side should have been—heard voices shouting through the fog—shouting them to stop. He snatched for the mare’s bit. She swerved—she sprang to the spur. He saw Julia’s profile, white on white, flash past him. His ears were full of his own name—her voice calling his name—as the roan leaped upward.

To Thair and Holden, blundering down the field, seeing six feet in front of them, came a sound—the dull, unresonant drop of a body falling from a height—a cry, suddenly cut off. Involuntarily they halted. Thair peered into the obscurity. Holden halloed. The silence was dreadful. They edged cautiously forward, expecting a hail for direction. Then suddenly out of the fog the black mare plunged on them, empty saddle, flying rein.

“God!” said Holden.

“E-e-easy!” muttered Thair, leading forward cautiously.

Now the stark line of the fence rose up; now, almost abreast of it, they saw the roan on the far side, standing, head tossed; and near him, vague as ghosts, two figures, one kneeling by one prone in the long, wet grass.