pale dawn, the restored twilight. Thereamid glimmered the
pole-star.

Eastward on the coast, at the far end of Pevensey Bay, the lights of
Hastings began to twinkle; out at sea was visible a single gleam,
appearing and disappearing, the lightship on the Sovereign Shoals.

Annabel continued speaking:

'We have both missed something, something that will never again he
offered us. When you asked me to be your wife, four years ago at
Ullswater, I did not love you. I admired you; I liked you; it would
have been very possible to me to marry you. But I had my ideal of love,
and I hoped to give my husband something more than I felt for you at
that time. A year after, I loved you. I suffered when you were
suffering. I was envious of the love you gave to another woman, and I
said to myself that the moment I hoped for had come only in vain. Since
then I have changed more than I changed in those twelve months. I am
not in love with you now; I can talk of these things without a flutter
of the pulse. Is it not true?'

She held her hand to him, baring the wrist. Egremont retained the hand
in both his own.

'I can tell you, you see,' she went on, 'what I know to be the truth,
that you missed the great opportunity of your life when you abandoned
Thyrza. Her love would have made of you what mine never could, even
though she herself had been taken from you very soon. I can tell you
the mere truth, you see. Dare you still ask for me?'

'I don't ask, Annabel. I have your hand and I keep it.'

'You may. I don't think I should ever give it to any other man.'

The night was thickening about them.

'Shall we go up to the Head?' Egremont asked.

'No higher.'

She said it with a significant look, and he understood her.

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