wind, instinct with compressed vigour of life. And she seemed to have lost Skrebensky. Out there in the strong, urgent night she could not find him.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“Here,” came his bodiless voice.

And groping, she touched him. A fire like lightning drenched them.

“Anton?” she said.

“What?” he answered.

She held him with her hands in the darkness, she felt his body again with hers.

“Don't leave me — come back to me,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, holding her in his arMs. But the male in him was scotched by the knowledge that she was not under his spell nor his influence. He wanted to go away from her. He rested in the knowledge that to-morrow he was going away, his life was really elsewhere. His life was elsewhere —