FLORENCE watched the riders down the terrace with a curious sense of participation in the race.

The whole thing had gone with such reckless abandon! What had happened to set Julia, with her hot glitter, headlong on such an escapade, to drag Longacre so doggedly after her? Her presentiment recurred to Florence with a hopeless drop of courage—that, after all, it had been too late! In freeing him, then, had she simply thrust him from her over a precipice?

She saw from the veranda the pink coats crowding through the drive gate. She heard around her voices exclaiming, reassuring, complaining. The riders had left behind them confusion of a petty, biting quality. She felt her endurance at snapping-point. She wanted to get out to “Tres Pinos,” to stand on the rocky point, above the tumult of the sea, and shout against the shouting breakers.

Instead she walked among oleanders and pampas plumes with a rigorous composure. The placid face of the garden, with its blended sweets and colors, was cloying; the passionless blue sky, defiant.

She had let him go! After that she had hoped at least for quiet—even the quiet of hopelessness. But here was only irritating unrest, a striving to understand what, after all, she had done. She had meant that release to be so much to him! She kept seeing Longacre as he had left her. She kept hearing him reproach her: “Why didn’t you tell me before?” The whole thing was in that!

She paced the garden over, threaded its thickets, measured its lawns with her steps, distanced its farthest hedges—moving, moving, while shadows lengthened over the lawns, the light grew yellow, the sun struck aslant through the oaks. Her thoughts kept her eyes oblivious to the waning of the afternoon, to the increasing chill in the breeze, to the queer, damp breath that seemed to come from no quarter, but to exhale from the earth, the sky, the sea. She came back to keen consciousness of her surroundings with a high voice questing her among the trees.

“What are you doing, poked off here at the end of creation?” cried Cissy. “We’re going to drive over to the club to see the finish and have supper. It’s the most we can do after the way they rushed off and left us!” There was a pettish twitch to her tiny chin. “Emma is having a fit for fear something has happened to ‘dear Julia,’ though I should say she’s perfectly capable of taking care of herself. There’s not the least bit of danger.”

“Danger?” Florence repeated uneasily.

“Why, the fog! Look!” Cissy indicated airily.

Florence saw a gray sea drifting up the bay, ocean above ocean, covering the far turn of the coast, and flowing, white as wool, among the low hills to the south.

“Of course there’s no danger they’ll run into it,” Cissy was saying. “They’ll finish in less than an hour—so hurry.”

Florence’s first impulse was to refuse. Next she wondered why. She was too nervous to be still. She felt, all at once, it would be a great relief to see the riders come in safely. Could she wait till after midnight to be sure of—of what would quiet this senseless uneasiness? She was so sure that it was best to go, she could hardly credit her own refusal. It made Cissy stare. Her look was a mixture of incredulity and relief. It gave Florence a faint amusement in the midst of her abstraction.

With Cissy had returned the rasping confusion that had been with the rush of the riders, but it did not depart with her.

Standing solitary, among the laurustinus bushes, Florence felt the impetus of it about her. She watched the fog gathering in, inclosing land and sea in an ever-narrowing ring. She caught herself wondering if by chance one of the long fingers had caught the hunt in its hook. Suddenly her restlessness, her unease, was crystallized into a sharp anxiety. Was it also an expectation?

She heard the party for the club-house drive away with relief. Why hadn’t she gone with them? What was she waiting for?

A veil was drawn over the burning disk of the sun as he dipped near the ocean. She was chilled with the fine approach of the fog.

She walked slowly back toward the house, turning once, and once again, to look behind her at the vanishing line of coast. She shivered, covering her head with her black Spanish lace and drawing it close over the bosom of the white gown that she had forgotten to change.

She had forgotten time that day. As much had crowded into a few hours as might fill a life. Henceforth time would be too much with her.

Her foot was on the veranda step when she saw a pink coat turn in at the drive gate. She strained her eyes. Charlie Thair—and without a hat. She had never before seen him, out-of-doors, without a hat. As he drew up the drive at a quick canter, she thought he had reined in a yet quicker pace. She stood, arrested in mid-motion, turning to him a face that was a question. He was the first to speak, hailing her while barely within distance, as if to make sure of the first word.

“Where is Mrs. Budd, Mrs. Essington?”

“She drove over to the country club with the others to see the finish. What—”

“Thank God! Are you the only one here?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“Did they take the victoria?”

“No; who is hurt?”

He only looked at her.

“Is it—is it—” she put her hand to her throat—“Julia?” she brought out desperately.

“No, not Julia.” He looked at her very keenly, very kindly. He need not have spoken the name that followed. She knew before she heard.

She got her breath with a sobbing sound, pressing her hand to her side.

“Oh, not a bad fall,—not bad, Mrs. Essington!” Thair was beside her. She thought he steadied her. “Some of the youngsters lost their heads, got into the fog. He went after ’em—took a nasty fence. Stunned, possibly a broken bone—nothing for the hunting-field,” he smiled to her. He kept her from going to pieces. But she looked through him. He saw he had not reassured her, and was glad she knew, in spite of him, how bad it might be.

“It was too far from the club-house to get him there,” he said. “Must have a carriage and a doctor.”

“Doctor!” she repeated, catching at the word as something to help pull herself together. “Who is there?”

He gave a name and number. She went in to the telephone, dazed, dreamy, not half taking in what had happened. All objects were confused, all thought stunned in her. She seemed to be floating. But the curt professional voice that answered her over the telephone woke her, spurring her faculties to activity. She was kept minutes when seconds were so precious. She could hardly hear him out.

She snatched a flask from the butler’s pantry, a man’s coat from the rack in the living-hall, dragged rugs and cushions from the divans. She was heaping them into the victoria when Thair came around from the stables. The overcoat covered her gown, but the lace was still over her head from which her face looked a sharp, silvery oval.

“The doctor can be here in half an hour,” she said. “Can we take a short cut?”

“I’ll show the man; I’m going to ride,” Thair said, putting her in. He took her going as the thing most to be expected. She leaned from the carriage. The sharp motion arrested him like a detaining hand.

“Who was it he went after?”

Thair looked at her. For a moment he hesitated. Then, “Yes, it was she,” he said. “Now then”—to the man—“lively!”

The carriage spun over the coast road. Its wheels flew, halos now of mud, now of water. The span were at their sharpest trot, but to Florence they seemed to crawl.

The fog was all around, over, eddying like smoke among the trees. Somewhere under its oblivion breakers were rolling in with sullen voices and heavy, crashing fall upon the sand.

She leaned forward, peering into the gray blur before. She was conscious only of interminable mist and one person it held away from her. She watched Thair’s pink coat moving like a will-o’-the-wisp. Now it stopped. Thair shouted to the driver. The victoria turned, dipped under the trees, passed between two gate-posts. She saw long grass under the wheels. The carriage rocked over broken ground. The horses were at a canter. Through a second gate, with a lurch, one wheel thumping over the bars half drawn aside. They were in the fields, with the ocean’s hoarse voice dwindled to a whisper that was “Hush!” while her heart, audible to her in the deep silence, drummed “Hurry, hurry, hurry!” Then above the melancholy sea she heard the sharp chopping of the pack. Cruel sound! It made her shiver. Then a hallo. Gray shapes moved in the fog like shadows on a sheet. One was close to the carriage, a woman crying. Then Holden’s voice saying to Thair, “Quicker than we hoped”; then, beside the carriage, exclaiming, “Florence!”

Her name was on his lips for the first time. She did not hear it.

“Where is he?” she said.

“Wait here,” Holden answered, and rode ahead.

The carriage stopped. She sprang out and ran forward a few steps—paused. She saw two men coming toward her, carrying something between them. Nearer, she saw it was a man. He hung dead weight, head fallen back, arms hanging, hands trailing in the long, wet grass. Behind, like a following dog, came a tall bare-headed girl. It seemed unreal, a play scene, till she saw the injured man’s face, dead white, with a dark streak across the mouth that lengthened it out into a horrible smile.

“Over here,” Florence said to the coachman. Her voice was lost in her throat, but he obeyed the beckoning hand. She was back in the carriage. The men were lifting up the burden her hands reached for.

“Easy with the shoulders!” Thair muttered. They laid it on the heaped-up cushions. Trembling as she was, she seemed to lift and move the inert body as easily as the men. She stooped and wiped away the stain that disfigured the poor face. And then it seemed the vacancy of it was the saddest look it could have worn.

“Can’t we get back by a road? The cut’s so rough?” she appealed to Holden.

The somber eyes of the men consulted each other.

“Yes,” Thair decided; “strike the country-club road over here. Longer, but—better.”

Holden nodded to the whipper-in.

“We’ll go ahead and knock out some rails.”

“You’d better go back to the house with ’em,” Thair called after him. “We’ll ride over and let ’em know at the club.” He turned to Julia, who, through it all, had stood back, not moving or taking her eyes from the shape in the carriage.

“You ought to go in the victoria.”

She turned her eyes quickly to Florence. She put her hands to her face. “No! No!” she cried with vehemence—it might have been horror.

Florence looked at her. Julia’s habit was torn away at the waist, her hair falling on her shoulders. She looked stunned, stupid.

Florence turned to Thair. “Can she ride?”

“I can ride,” Julia repeated dully. Thair was holding the black, but she made no motion to mount. She only stood watching the black bulk of the carriage laboring away across the broken field.

Four riders waited uncertain, whispering, looking after the carriage, looking at Thair, looking at Julia.

Bessie Lewis was mopping her cheeks with the wet ball of her handkerchief. She gave a hysterical gasp. “Oh, Julia, your habit!” She dabbed nervously at the skirt.

Julia roused, shrinking away from the touch, turning to Thair. He almost lifted her to the saddle. But once up, she seemed to wake, to stiffen. She let him take the rein and lead the black through the ragged opening left by the torn-away rails. The carriage had turned down the road under the overarching trees.

Thair watched her anxiously. He kept her rein. He turned, touching his horse lightly with the spur.

“If you can ride as far as the club—” he began.

She pulled herself together, alert, staring at him, at the whispering four.

The rein jerked out of Thair’s hand. He half turned in his saddle, blank, dismayed, as she wheeled and rode furiously after the victoria.