Anna the Adventuress

The girl paused and steadied herself for a moment against a field

gate. Her breath came fast in little sobbing pants. Her dainty shoes

were soiled with dust and there was a great tear in her skirt. Very

slowly, very fearfully, she turned her head. Her cheeks were the

colour of chalk, her eyes were filled with terror. If a cart were

coming, or those labourers in the field had heard, escape was

impossible.

The terror faded from her eyes. A faint gleam of returning colour gave

her at once a more natural appearance. So far as the eye could reach,

the white level road, with its fringe of elm-trees, was empty. Away

off in the fields the blue-smocked peasants bent still at their toil.

They had heard nothing, seen nothing. A few more minutes, and she was

safe.

Yet before she turned once more to resume her flight she schooled

herself with an effort to look where it had happened. A dark mass of

wreckage, over which hung a slight mist of vapour, lay half in the

ditch, half across the hedge, close under a tree from the trunk of

which the bark had been torn and stripped. A few yards further off

something grey, inert, was lying, a huddled-up heap of humanity

twisted into a strange unnatural shape. Again the chalky pallor spread

even to her lips, her eyes became lit with the old terror. She

withdrew her head with a little moan, and resumed her flight. Away up

on the hillside was the little country railway station. She fixed her

eyes upon it and ran, keeping always as far as possible in the shadow

of the hedge, gazing fearfully every now and then down along the

valley for the white smoke of the train.

She reached the station, and mingling with a crowd of excursionists

who had come from the river on the other side, took her place in the

train unnoticed. She leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes.

Until the last moment she was afraid.

Arrived in Paris she remembered that she had not the money for a

_fiacre_. She was in ill trim for walking, but somehow or other she

made her way as far as the Champs Elysees, and sank down upon an empty

seat.

She had not at first the power for concealment. Her nerves were

shattered, her senses dazed by this unexpected shock. She sat there, a

mark for boulevarders, the unconscious object of numberless wondering

glances. Paris was full, and it was by no means a retired spot which

she had found. Yet she never once thought of changing it. A person of

somewhat artificial graces and mannerisms, she was for once in her

life perfectly natural. Terror had laid a paralyzing hand upon her,

fear kept her almost unconscious of the curious glances which she was

continually attracting.