I detested
the task of watching her; it filled me with peevish disgust. But
in proportion as I hated it I was eager to have it done and be
done with it, and succeed, and stuff my ears and begone from the
scene. When she presently came to the verge of the beech wood,
and, entering a little open clearing, seemed to loiter, I went
cautiously. This, I thought, must be the rendezvous; and I held
back warily, looking to see him step out of the thicket.
But he did not, and by-and-by she quickened her pace. She
crossed the open and entered a wide ride cut through a low, dense
wood of alder and dwarf oak--a wood so closely planted and so
intertwined with hazel and elder and box that the branches rose
like a solid wall, twelve feet high, on either side of the track.
Down this she passed, and I stood and watched her go, for I dared
not follow. The ride stretched away as straight as a line for
four or five hundred yards, a green path between green walls. To
enter it was to be immediately detected, if she turned, while the
thicket itself permitted no passage. I stood baffled and raging,
and watched her pass along.
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