or and scent and sound, she pressed forward to the summit.

On the plateau, although the fog was dense enough to mask the edge of
the cliff at a distance of fifty yards and to merge in a gray confusion
sky and sea beyond, the fresher atmosphere lightened the general
effect. She could watch the fog sweeping up and down in diaphanous forms
and winged nonentities. The silence in the hedgeless, treeless country
was profound. The sea, oily calm in such weather, gave very seldom a low
sob in some cavern beneath the cliff. Far out a solitary gull cried
occasionally.

How absurd, thought Jenny suddenly, to expect Maurice on such a day.
What painting was possible in so elusive a landscape, so immaterial a
scene? He was not at all likely to be there. She stood for a moment
listening, and was violently startled by the sight of some animal richly
hued even in such a negation of color. The fox slipped by her with
lowered brush and ears laid back, vanishing presently over the side of
the cliff. She had thought for a second that it was Trewhella's dog, and
her heart beat very quickly in the eerie imagination of herself and his
master alone in this grayness. She walked on over the cushions of
heather, pricking her ankles in the low bushes of gorse. Burnet roses
were in bloom, lying like shells on the ground. Ahead of her she saw a
lonely flower tremulous in the damp mist. It was a blue columbine, a
solitary plant full blown. She thought how beautiful it looked and
stooped to pluck it. On second thoughts she decided that it would be a
shame not to let it live, this lovely deep-blue flower, nodding faintly.

Jenny stood once more fronting the vapors on each side in turn, and was
on the point of going home, when she perceived a shadow upon the mist
that with approach acquired the outlines of a man and very soon proved
to be Maurice. She noticed how pale he was and anxious, very unlike the
old Maurice, even unlike himself of five or six weeks ago.

"You've come at last," he said.

"Yes, I've come to say you mustn't stay here no more. It worries me."

"Jenny," he said, "I knew I'd been a fool before I saw you again last
first of May. I've known for four years what a fool and knave I'd been;
but, oh, God, I never knew so clearly till the other day, till I'd hung
about these cliffs waiting for you to come."

"Where was the good?" she asked. "It's years too late now."

"When I heard from Castleton where you were, I tried not to come. He