The morning came quickly in a cold gray haze, for the furnaces, starting to work one by one as the strike collapsed, had begun again to cover the Flats with a canopy of smoke. It was Mary who went first, going by the back drive, which led past the railway-station. And with her departure the whole world turned dark. While she had been there with him, he was happy with the sense of security that is born of companionship in adventure, but as her figure faded presently into the smoke and mist that veiled the deserted houses of the Flats, the enchantment of the night gave way to a cold, painful sense of actuality. The whole night had been, as some nights are in the course of lives that move passionately, unreal and charged with strange, intangible currents of fire and ice. During that brief hour or two when he had slept, years seemed to have passed. The figure of his father had become so remote that he no longer seemed cheap and revolting, but only shallow and pitiful. Even the memory of McTavish and the two men with the lantern standing over the dead woman in the snow was dim now and unreal.
It was only the sight of the trampled, dirty snow, the black spot where the fire had been and the pool of blood at the turn of the drive that made him know how near had been all these things which had happened during the night. And the park was no longer beautiful and haunted in the moonlight, but only a dreary expanse of land filled with dead trees and decaying arbors. The old doubts began slowly to torment him once more—the feeling of terror lest Naomi should ever discover
