n outline of
his hooked profile more than ever like an effigy carved by savage hands.
Charles scanned him despairingly. The feeling was strong within him that
he was still keeping something back.

"Thalassa," he said, "you should have told this story before. You have
done wrong in keeping it back."

"'Twould a' been breaking of my word to Miss Sisily."

"It was of more importance to clear her. You could have done that if you
had come forward and told the police, as you've just told me, that she
left the house with you before nine o'clock on that night."

"'Twouldn't a' helped if I had. I found out next day that the wagonette
didn't get to the cross-roads that night till nearly ten o'clock. 'Twas
after half-past nine when it left the inn."

"What made you find out that?"

"Do you think I didn't put my wits to work when the damned detective was
trying to put me into it as well as her? I thought it all out then--about
telling the truth. But I saw 'twould a' been no good for her, but only
made matters worse. Who'd a' believed me? There be times when a man can
say too much, so I kept my mouth shut."

There was so much sense in this that Charles had nothing to say in reply.
In silence they tramped along till they reached the dip of the sea in
which the Moon Rock lay. Here they paused, as if with the mutual feeling
that the time had come for the interview to end. Behind them towered the
cliffs, with Flint House hanging crazily on the summit far above where
they stood. The eye of Charles ranged along the shore to the spot where he
had said good-bye to Sisily not so very long ago, then returned to rest
doubtingly on Thalassa. The old man stood with his hand resting on a giant
rock, his dark eyes fixed on the rim of the waste of grey water where a
weak declining sun hung irresolutely, as though fearing the inevitable
plunge.

"I'd a' given my right arm to have saved her from this," Charles heard him
mutter.

Charles found himself looking down at Thalassa's brown muscular arm,
corded with veins, stretched out on the rock by which he stood. It was as
though it had been bared for his inspection, which was not, indeed, the
case. If that arm could save Sisily, it was at her service. But what was
the good of that? What was the good of his own efforts to help her?
Charles had a suffocating feeling of the futility of human effort when
opposed by the malignity of Fate. He asked himself with aching heart what
was to be the outco