There was an exclamation, a sudden jamming on of brakes, they drew to a standstill, and she found herself caught. Both the Guyse twins had come in search of her. Ninian was driving, Wilfrid beside him.
In a moment the whole frame of Olwen’s mind changed. The weakness of her spirit passed. She was almost free, and they had pursued.
In her terror and distress, a cry broke from her. She held up her hands, like one at bay, and her voice was strangled as it is in nightmare as she gasped:
"Go away! Go away! I will not come with you!"
Wolf was at her side. He held his cap in his hand, and his expression was that of pitying kindness.
"Thank God we have found you!" he said. "What can have happened? Did you walk out of the house in your sleep?"
She put up her hands to her throat as if she were choking. "No! no! I have escaped," she panted. "I will not go back, I tell you! I will not go back!"
"Oh, but I think you must," was the gentle, regretful answer. "You could not be so unkind as to cast this slur upon our hospitality? We know that there have been difficulties, but I do most earnestly assure you that my mother has always wanted to do her very best to make you happy and comfortable. Surely—surely things were not so bad yesterday that nothing would do but a midnight flight? Come, come!" He took her helpless hands. "Try to quiet yourself. Try to reflect. You are feverish and overwrought—not fit to travel. Let me——"
He was drawing her gently towards the car where it waited. Ninian had kept his seat at the driving-wheel, his face hard set, looking straight in front of him as though he had turned into a chauffeur.
In her extremity, resisting the compulsion of Wilfrid’s hands, the unspoken reproof of his eyes, she appealed passionately to the elder twin. "Ninian," she cried, "help me! Don’t let me be taken back! I won’t go back! I can’t! ... You know I can’t!"
Ninian flung himself into the road and approached.
"Why," Wolf was saying, half playfully, "if Ninian knows why you cannot stay with us another hour, he knows more than I do. Come, come, when the doctor has been and your temperature goes down, you will be grateful to us for having saved you from the consequences of a little temporary delirium—indeed you will!"