A sense of utter joylessness fell on Napier, as for a few minutes longer he kept the pace at Julian's heels. He struggled consciously against the absurd illusion of being left out in the cold. He, with his hosts of friends, his hosts of "affairs," scattered broadcast through the last ten years, the Gavan Napier of enviable worldly lot, had an instant's keen perception of the externality of all these things. He had never lived through an hour like this that was Julian's.
"I'll turn back now," Napier said aloud. The figure in front neither turned nor tarried. On and on.
Napier smiled. His friend was hurrying along under the stars toward a planet mightier for light and leading than any in the heavens--a candle set in the window of a girl.
Before Napier had finished sorting the next morning's letters, the Grants' chauffeur drove up to Kirklamont with a note.
_Must_ see you before the others come. Car will wait and bring you to the landing.
The slight figure was prancing up and down the strip of sand between encircling rocks. Never a look toward his beloved boat, riding with transfigured sails at the entrance to the cove. As far away as Napier could see his friend, he felt the nervous force that was being expended in that absorbed prowl.
"I nearly routed you out in the middle of the night," was the way Julian began.
"You remember last night, just to prevent me from taking Nan home, that woman took Nan home herself? Well, she stayed at the 'Queen' a mortal hour. As if that wasn't enough in all conscience, Nan was for seeing her home! 'No, darling, no!' I heard the von Schwarzenberg say. And then with that acrid break in her sugariness, 'I don't want to be taken half-way!'
"There was something I lost. Then, 'My dear child,' I heard her say, 'you must allow me here to know what is appropriate, what is expected. What isn't expected, is that an inexperienced girl, strange to the place, should be running about dark roads this time of night. You would be misunderstood. I should be misunderstood if I let you.' Then Nan was, '_So_ sorry!' and 'Forgive me, Greta!' They kissed. Nan went slowly back to the inn. Then, instead of turning into the Kirklamont footpath, Schwarzenberg came up the hill. I laughed to myself to think of her surprise when she should come across me. But she turned to the left and cut across the west flank. I thought maybe the woman had got bewildered, going in unaccustomed places at night. But she wasn't walking like a bewildered person at all. Do you know what she _was_ walking like? Like a person who has done the same thing before. She was making straight as a die for that old shepherd's hut the bracken cutters use. She went into that hut and stayed there three quarters of an hour."