“Then all the more reason why society should protect itself against you,” Wayne began again; but Ford was no longer listening.  His attention was wholly fixed on the girl, who continued to beckon noiselessly, fluttering for an instant close to the threshold of the room, then withdrawing suddenly to the very edge of the terrace, waving a white scarf in token that he should follow her.  She had repeated her action again and again, beckoning with renewed insistence, before he understood and made up his mind.

“I don’t say that I refuse to help you,” Wayne was saying.  “My sympathy with you is very sincere.  If I can get your sentence commuted—­In fact, a reprieve is almost certain—­”

With a dash as lithe and sudden as that which had brought him in, Ford was out on the terrace, following the white dress and the waving scarf which were already disappearing down the yew-tree walk.  The girl’s flight over grass and gravel was like nothing so much as that of a bird skimming through the air.  Ford’s own steps crunched loudly on the stillness of the night, so that if any one lay in ambush he knew he could not escape.  He was prepared to hear shots come ringing from any quarter, but he ran on with the indifference of a soldier grown used to battle, intent on keeping up with the shadow fleeing before him.

He followed her through the garden gate he himself had left open, and down the lane leading to the pasture.  At the point where he had entered it from the right, she turned to the left, keeping away from the mountains and parallel with the lake.  There was no moon, but the night was clear; and no sound but that of the shrill, sustained chorus of insect life.

Beyond the pasture the lane became nothing but a path, zigzagging up a hillside between patches of Indian corn.  The girl sped over it so lightly that Ford would have found it hard to keep her in sight if from time to time she had not paused and waited.  When he came near enough to see the outlines of her form she flew on again, less like a living woman than a mountain wraith.

From the top of the hill he could see the dull gleam of the lake with its girdle of lamp-lit towns.  Here the woodland began again; not the main body of the forest, but one of its long arms, thrust down over hill and valley, twisting its way in among villages and farm lands.  That which had been a path now become a trail, along which the girl flitted with the ease of habit and familiarity.

In the concentration of his effort to keep the moving white spot in view Ford lost count of time.  Similarly he had little notion of the distance they were covering.  He guessed that they had been ten or fifteen minutes on the way, and that they might have gone a mile, when, after waiting for him to come almost near enough to speak to her, she began moving in a direction at an acute angle to that by which they had come.  At the same time he perceived that they were on the side of a low wooded mountain and that they were beating their way round it.