She had reached the top of the second hillock between them, he meanwhile climbing also, when her plight began to seem desperate. The last push up hill had made her breathing fearfully ragged, and she had reached the top just in time to avoid falling. She realized also, what she had not grasped before, that her task was not merely to cover the stretch of uneven ground between herself and Lawrence, but to overtake him as well. If she could not gain seriously on him by the next plunge down hill and across the intervening shallow dip, before he was again descending at a helter skelter pace, she was done … she was lost. She would have to sink mute upon the earth while he would go on whistling and unknowing. It was too late to attract his attention by calling. Even if she had tried to shout earlier, with the wind as it was, it would most likely have been mere waste of precious breath. Precious breath indeed! Now it was too late for the weakest cheep of a hoi-hoi! Soon she would have no breath left for anything, not even for survival.

She plunged down the hill, not zig-zagging now, but jumping and stumbling straight forward, sometimes falling on her hands and knees. The braid of her skirt was torn into festoons and her knees trembled shockingly. It was even worse going downhill than up. But she went on, and across the amber-coloured dip which was full of quivering air. Only twice before in her life had she run so. Once, it had been up the Glasgow hill to her first meeting with Louis, under the dread that he would be gone. And once it had been along the winding shore road to the West Coast village where her mother lay dying. She remembered these times not … “Once for love, once for death” … Her blood took up the refrain with its bursting throbs … “Once for love, once for death … this time for life!” It was life that she ran for now. life … few there be that find it. Life … that for her Lawrence held in his keeping … and was carrying swiftly away.