Someone had to help her, after all! Tomas wouldn't. Tomas was sending her to her death. Someone else would have to help her!

Walking down the paths of Petrin Hill, she could not wean her thoughts from the man who was supposed to shoot her but did not. Oh, how she longed for him!

Her whole body racked with sobs, she embraced the tree as if it were not a tree, as if it were her long-lost father, a grandfather she had never known, a great-grandfather, a great-great-grand-father, a hoary old man come to her from the depths of time to offer her his face in the form of rough tree bark.

She was so afraid of seeing him that her stomach was in knots and she thought she was going to be sick.

Then she turned her head. The three men were far off in the distance by then, wandering across the greensward like golfers. The one with the rifle even held it like a golf club.

The closer she got to the city, the more she longed for the man with the rifle and the more she feared Tomas. He would never forgive her for failing to keep her word. He would never forgive her her cowardice, her betrayal. She had come to the street where they lived, and knew she would see him in a minute or two.