"What are you crying about, then?"
"Didn't I think you loved me—truly!"
They were approaching the little coastguard station of Yexley Gap. Damn this rain. Damn this slippery grass. Damn this infernal wind. A fiercer gust came blustering seaward. He caught with both hands at his hat—nearly gone. Essie's cloak upon his arm blew across his eyes—blinded him, and he had to stop.
She didn't scream. It was not a cry. She just, in perplexity, in puzzlement, in trouble as it were, said "Arthur!"
She was balancing. She was struck by the wind and balancing—balancing with her body and with her arms, and looking at him as if she did not quite know what was happening to her; and in the like perplexity said to him "Arthur!"—balancing, over-balancing.
There were not ten feet between them. He rushed, and slipped as he rushed. It was like running with those leaden feet of nightmare. It seemed to him an immense time before he reached her. A horrible, blundering, unspeakable business, then. The cloak, the accursed cloak, got between them—between them. A jumbling, ghastly, blundering business, their hands fumbling on either side of it. Was this going on for ever and ever? The accursed cloak fumbled itself away. Ah, God, now it was their naked hands that were fumbling—all wet and slippery with rain, seeming to be all fists and no fingers and only knocking against one another instead of catching hold. And not a word said, and only very quick breathing, and jumbling and fumbling and jumbling. Look here, this fumbling, she's falling, toppling; is this going on for ever and ever and ever?
It was her hands that in the last wild, hideous fumbling clutched his. She toppled right back. He fell. He was face downwards upon the slippery grass, to his waist almost over the cliff, and slipping, slipping, and she had his hands—the backs of his hands over the knuckles so that his fingers were imprisoned and useless, and there she hung and dragged him, and he was slipping.
He said: "O God, Essie! O God! Can't you get your hands higher up, so I can hold you, instead of you holding me?"
She said: "I shall fall if I do."
He said: "My darling! My darling! Hold on, then, Essie. Dig your nails in."