ing in!"

"Well, they're missing a gorgeous night, all of them," he exclaimed,
holding her tightly.

They walked to the fisherman's shelter and stood against the iron rail
on top of the low cliff. The moon had made a broad path of golden light
across the bay, from the shingle to the pinnacle on the nearer of the
two headlands, and they could see the golden water flowing through the
hole in the cliff.

"I'd love to bathe now," Mary said. "I'd love to swim all along that
splash of moonlight to the caves and back again...."

A belated sea-gull cried wearily overhead and then flew off to its nest
in the cliffs.

"The water's awfully black looking outside the moonlight," Henry
exclaimed.

"Ummm!" she answered.

They shivered a little in the cold air, and instinctively they drew
closer to each other. Beneath them, lying high on the shingle, were the
trawlers, lying ready for the morning when the fishermen would push them
down into the sea.

"Tom Yeo and Jim Rattenbury are going to have a motor put into their
trawler," Mary said. "It'll make a lot of difference to them. They'll be
able to go out even when there isn't any wind."

Henry did not answer. He had a strange sense of fear that was
inexplicable to him. He seemed to be outside himself, outside his own
fear, looking on at it and wondering what had caused it. He felt as if
something were pulling at him, trying to force him to look round ... and
he was afraid to look round.... He shuddered violently.

"Are you cold, Quinny?" Mary said anxiously, turning to him.

"Yes," he answered quickly, wishing to account for his sudden shivering
in a way that would not alarm her. "We'd better go back!..."

What was the matter? Why was he so suddenly afraid and so strangely
afraid? If it had been dark, very dark, and he had been alone ... but it
was bright moonlight ... so bright that one could almost see to read ...
and Mary was with him ... and yet he was afraid to look round at the
White Cliff. Something inside him, apart from him, seemed to feel that
if he looked up the long steep path over the White Cliff ... _he would
see something_.

"Come on, Mary!" he said, turning to go, and turning in such a way that
he could not see the Cliff.

They walked rapidly up the street.... "That'll warm me," he explained
to Mary ... and as he walked, he was afraid to look back.

"What the devil's the matter with me?" he kept saying to himself until
they reached the end of the lan