There were moments when he cried to himself that it was an apparition he had seen and heard.  He had avoided his friends all day; of the English-speaking people in St. Gian one only knew why he was distraught, and she was the last he wished to speak to; but more than once he nearly sought her to say, “Partner in my shame, what did you see? what did you hear?” In the afternoon he had a letter from Elspeth telling him how she was enjoying her holiday by the sea, and mentioning that David was at that moment writing to Grizel in Thrums.  But was it, then, all a dream? he cried, nearly convinced for the first time, and he went into the arbour saying determinedly that it was a dream; and in the arbour, standing primly in a corner, was Grizel’s umbrella.  He knew that umbrella so well!  He remembered once being by while she replaced one of its ribs so deftly that he seemed to be looking on at a surgical operation.  The old doctor had given it to her, and that was why she would not let it grow old before she was old herself.  Tommy opened it now with trembling hands and looked at the little bits of Grizel on it:  the beautiful stitching with which she had coaxed the slits to close again; the one patch, so artful that she had clapped her hands over it.  And he fell on his knees and kissed these little bits of Grizel, and called her “beloved,” and cried to his gods to give him one more chance.

“I woke up.”  It was all that she had said.  It was Grizel’s excuse for inconveniencing him.  She had said it apologetically and as if she did not quite know how she came to be there herself.  There was no look of reproach on her face while the match burned; there had been a pitiful smile, as if she was begging him not to be very angry with her; and then when he said her name she gave that little cry as if she had recognized herself, and stole away.  He lived that moment over and over again, and she never seemed to be horror-stricken until he cried “Grizel!” when her recognition of herself made her scream.  It was as if she had wakened up, dazed by the terrible things that were being said, and then, by the light of that one word “Grizel,” suddenly knew who had been listening to them.

Did he know anything more?  He pressed his hands harshly on his temples and thought.  He knew that she was soaking wet, that she had probably sought the arbour for protection from the rain, and that, if so, she had been there for at least four hours.  She had wakened up.  She must have fallen asleep, knocked down by fatigue.  What fatigue it must have been to make Grizel lie there for hours he could guess, and he beat his brow in anguish.  But why she had come he could not guess.  “Oh, miserable man, to seek for reasons,” he cried passionately to himself, “when it is Grizel—­Grizel herself—­you should be seeking for!”

He walked and ran the round of the lake, and it was not on the bank that his staring eyes were fixed.

At last he came for a moment upon her track.  The people of an inn six miles from St. Gian remembered being asked yesterday by an English miss, walking alone, how far she was from Bad-Platten.  She was wearing something brown, and her boots were white with dust, and these people had never seen a lady look so tired before; when she stood still she had to lean against the wall.  They said she had red-hot eyes.