May Thurston was another in the throes of anguish, and that from no fault of her own. Her love for the engineer had involved her in almost unendurable humiliation. His ostentatious worship of Margaret West at first filled May with the agony of outraged affection, then forced her to the wrath of revolt against such treachery. This mood endured. The little hypocrisies of loving, which Masters attempted on the rare occasions when the two were alone together, did not deceive her in the least. Yet, the final break between the two was delayed for lack of courage on her part to accuse him openly of his guilt. The matter stood thus between them when, one morning after a sleepless night, May got from her bed before sunrise, dressed herself hurriedly, and left the cottage, hoping that the freshness of the dawn might serve to soothe her wearied nerves. She wandered aimlessly hither and yon through the woods bordering the shore, and did indeed win some solace for her soul in the radiance of the summer day. She was about fifty yards distant from the cottage, descending the slope that ran to the shore, when she heard a slight noise among the bushes in front of her. She halted instantly, curious to know what manner of creature might be at hand, and welcoming any distraction from the distress in her heart.
Herself hidden by a screen of foliage, she peered forth cautiously, searching with her eyes the thicket beyond. At first, she could distinguish nothing, and, after a little, became convinced that she had been deceived by the dropping of a rotted branch. She was on the point of advancing again, when another and louder sound arrested her. It issued from a place somewhat farther to the right than that she had scrutinized, and now, as she watched intently, she made out the dim form of some object moving slowly within a clump of high bushes, from the center of which grew a thick-leafed sapling. Another minute of inspection convinced her that the object was a man, and immediately an intuition bore upon her that it was Masters himself. Sure of his identity, she went forward quickly, following the impulse of the moment, and called him by name.
Masters--for it was in truth the engineer--whirled and faced the girl with an expression of terror, which, however, vanished so swiftly that May afterward found herself wondering if in fact she had not merely imagined it. Moreover, he smiled on her with more tenderness than he had exhibited in his manner for days, and his voice, when he spoke, was caressing: