lf, his teeth clenched upon
his lower lip. How furiously she had hated him that day!

He turned to go; but paused, arrested by some instinct that bade
him cast one more look downwards along the howling shore. In another
moment he was lying full length upon the rotten ground, staring
intently down upon the group of rocks more than two hundred feet below
him.

Two figures--a man and a woman--had detached themselves from the
shelter of these rocks, and were moving slowly, very slowly, towards
the path that led inwards from the shore. They were closely linked
together, so much his first glance told him. But there was something
in the man's gait that caught the eye and upon which Nick's whole
attention was instantly focussed. He could not see the face, but
the loose-slung, gigantic limbs were familiar to him. With all his
knowledge of the world of men, he had not seen many such.

Slowly the two approached till they stood almost immediately beneath
him, and there, as upon mutual impulse, they stopped. It was a corner
protected from the driving blast by the crumbling mass of cliff that
had slipped in the night. The rain was falling heavily again, but
neither the two on the shore nor the solitary watcher stretched on the
perilous edge of the cliff seemed aware of it. All were intent upon
other things.

Suddenly the woman raised her face, and with a movement that was
passionate reached up her arms and clasped them about the man's bent
neck. She was speaking, but no sound or echo of words was audible
in that tumult. Only her face lifted to the beating rain, with its
passion of love, its anguish of pain, told the motionless spectator
something of their significance.

It was hidden from him almost at once by the man's massive head; but
he had seen enough, more than enough, to verify a certain suspicion
which had long been quartered at the back of his brain.

Stealthily he drew himself back from the cliff edge, and sat up on the
damp grass. Again his eyes swept the horizon; there was something of a
glare in them. He was drenched through and through by the rain, but
he did not know it. Had Muriel seen him at that moment she might have
likened him with a shudder to an eagle that viewed its quarry from
afar.

He returned to the house without further lingering, and spent the two
hours that followed in prowling ceaselessly up and down his library.

At the end of that time he sat down suddenly at the writing-table, and
scrawled