"Let us walk a little up the path into the woods," he said, "and get
away from all this."

"The further away the better," she answered bitterly, and he felt the
shiver run through her again as she spoke.

The methodical waltz-music from that unseen dancing platform rose again
above all other sounds. They moved up the woodland path, their steps
insensibly falling into the rhythm of its strains, and vanished from
sight among the trees.



CHAPTER XXIV


Theron and Celia walked in silence for some minutes, until the noises
of the throng they had left behind were lost. The path they followed had
grown indefinite among the grass and creepers of the forest carpet;
now it seemed to end altogether in a little copse of young birches, the
delicately graceful stems of which were clustered about a parent stump,
long since decayed and overgrown with lichens and layers of thick moss.

As the two paused, the girl suddenly sank upon her knees, then threw
herself face forward upon the soft green bark which had formed itself
above the roots of the ancient mother-tree. Her companion looked down
in pained amazement at what he saw. Her body shook with the violence
of recurring sobs, or rather gasps of wrath and grief Her hands, with
stiffened, claw-like fingers, dug into the moss and tangle of tiny