the inevitable end. Her very love for him was an argument
against him. Never, never, never!--the booming sea on the rocks below
seemed to take up the refrain--would this woman be wife of his? Never,
never, never; the play was played out. Down through the vista of years
he looked, and saw her the wife of the man he hated--the man who was to
him the very incarnation of hypocrisy and cant He saw the hard, loveless
life; he saw the lines growing in the fair, young face that was so dear
to him; he saw stern Duty take the place of Love; he saw her life grow
hard and narrow; he read in her face the bitterness of unfulfilled
hopes, and the longing, the unutterable longing for something that might
not be put into words, and a great pity for her filled his heart. Not
for worlds would he add to her pain. She had come into his life, a
dainty, fair, tender thing, and he had only hurt her; by his own pain he
gauged hers.

A step forward and he was looking down at the snow-white breakers
thundering at the foot of the cliff. The sea was his home, the cruel,
fickle sea; he would go back to it and leave the woman he loved in
peace. What right had he to come into her life to spoil it? He would
go back whence he came, and all should be as it had been before. Go
back?--ah! we none of us can go back; surely the Greeks of old were
right when they said that not even Omnipotence itself can alter the
past. For him he felt, as he watched the white gulls wheel about the
face of the inaccessible cliff, there could be no comfort. He had gotten
a hurt that would last him a lifetime, but for her--surely he had not
hurt her irredeemably.

Very slowly he walked back to her side again, and laid a hand on her
shoulder.

"Susy," he said, and he strove with all his strength to banish from his
voice all else but kindness, "are you--do you--are you going to marry
Clement Scott?"

But she would not raise her face.

"My father--he--I mean--" and so low was her voice, he had to stoop his
head to hear, "father said I should--he is a Godfearing man--my father
said I--I should beware that I chose--the--the better man. It--it--would
be for my soul's salvation."

"Susy--Susy, child, I would not harm you, not for all this world or the
next could give me. See now, my darling, I must go and leave you, must
I?"

She raised her face now, and the bright sunlight showed it to him white
and strained. She was paying for her love, if ever woman was. It went to
his h