to her full senses and
recognition of what had happened.

The knife was still in her hand and her hand was sticky and damp.

She said to herself: "That is his blood." The thought that perhaps she
had killed him did not occur to her. The fear of him was still so
intense, that it made him alive, alive somewhere in the surrounding
darkness, and waiting to seize her. Then she began to steal off towards
the sound of the sea. Twice as she went she stopped and turned, ready to
strike again, then when the water was washing round her feet she came up
the beach a few paces and crouched down.

The sea was at her back and the haunting dread of being followed
vanished.

It was now that she asked herself the question: "Have I killed him?"
Meaning:--"Have I freed myself of him,"--hoping this was so.

The terror behind her having vanished she was now brave. It seemed to
her that the sound of the sea had become sharper; then she realized that
the sound of the rain had ceased. Her mind seemed working in a dual
manner and she had not fully recognized the cessation of the rain till
the sound of the sea clinched the fact.

Through the clear night now came the melancholy crying of the whale
birds, and through the broken clouds a ray of the moon shewed a faint
light in which the cliffs began to stand out.

The incoming tide washed round her so that she had to move, it seemed
determined to drive her up to the caves. She could see now the whole
beach desolate of life and before her, vaguely sketched in the cliff
wall, the cave openings.

She came along the sea edge till she reached the break in the cliffs,
then, looking behind her again to make sure, she took refuge in the
bushes.

For the last few yards before reaching them she seemed wading through
tides of nothingness. In the shelter of the bushes she forgot
everything.

CHAPTER XVI

ALONE

She was awakened by the light of day. Kerguelen had cleared its face of
clouds and the new risen sun was on sea and mountains and land.

A whole family of rabbits were disporting themselves close to her in a
clear space between the bushes and as she sat up they darted off, a
glimpse of their cotton white tails shewing for a moment in the sun.

She was stiff from the damp, her clothes were wet despite the oilskin
coat which she had left open, and her throat was sore, every bone ached
as though she had been beaten. Her soul felt sick. It was as though the
crawling beast of the nig