" she answered; and her voice matched his
for grayness.

They sat down together on a long flat stone half embedded in a wiry
clump of whortleberries. Behind them the lonely hillsides rose,
brilliant with yellow bracken and the purple of heather. Before them
stretched the wide sea. It was a soft, gray day. Streaks of pale
sunlight trembled at moments far out on the water. The tide was rising
in the little bay above which they sat, and Broomhurst watched the lazy
foam-edged waves slipping over the uncovered rocks toward the shore,
then sliding back as though for very weariness they despaired of
reaching it. The muffled, pulsing sound of the sea filled the silence.
Broomhurst thought suddenly of hot Eastern sunshine, of the whir of
insect wings on the still air, and the creaking of a wheel in the
distance. He turned and looked at his companion.

"I have come thousands of miles to see you," he said; "aren't you going
to speak to me now I am here?"

"Why did you come? I told you not to come," she answered, falteringly.
"I--" she paused.

"And I replied that I should follow you--if you remember," he answered,
still quietly. "I came because I would not listen to what you said then,
at that awful time. You didn't know _yourself_ what you said. No wonder!
I have given you some months, and now I have come."

There was silence between them. Broomhurst saw that she was crying; her
tears fell fast on to her hands, that were clasped in her lap. Her face,
he noticed, was thin and drawn.

Very gently he put his arm round her shoulder and drew her nearer to
him. She made no resistance; it seemed that she did not notice the
movement; and his arm dropped at his side.

"You asked me why I had come. You think it possible that three months
can change one very thoroughly, then?" he said, in a cold voice.

"I not only think it possible; I have proved it," she replied, wearily.

He turned round and faced her.

"You _did_ love me, Kathleen!" he asserted. "You never said so in words,
but I know it," he added, fiercely.

"Yes, I did."

"And--you mean that you don't now?"

Her voice was very tired. "Yes; I can't help it," she answered; "it has
gone--utterly."

The gray sea slowly lapped the rocks. Overhead the sharp scream of a
gull cut through the stillness. It was broken again, a moment afterward,
by a short hard laugh from the man.

"Don't!" she whispered, and laid a hand swiftly on his arm. "Do you
think it isn't worse for m