Here stood her house; she had the briefest possible start of him, and he had run headlong the whole way; by all the certainty of instinct, he knew that he had chosen the right path: why, then, had he not overtaken her?
If she met that band which he had just broken through--He wavered in the darkness, and was turning wildly to race back, when a sudden light sprang up before him in her window.

He plunged forward, in at the gate, across a plot of turf, stumbled through the Goddess of Mercy bamboo that hedged the door, and went falling up the dark stairs, crying aloud,--for the first time in his life,--"Bertha! Bertha!" Empty rooms rang with the name, but no one answered.

At last, however, reaching the upper level, he saw by lamplight, through the open door, two figures struggling.

Just before he entered, she tore herself free and went unsteadily across the room.

Chantel, white and abject, turned as in panic.
"Oh!" Plainly he had not expected to see another face as white as his own.