From the uttermost depths of his heart: "Truly! Truly!"
"More than any one?"
From his soul, from all his deepest depths, from all he ever had suffered, from all he ever had been, "Essie," he cried, "before God I love you more than all the world!"
She said: "You can't raise me to kiss me, can you, dear?"
He said: "I can't, Essie."
"Are you slipping?"
He did not answer her. He was slipped almost beyond recovery.
She then said: "Say that again—'before God.' I like that, dear."
"Essie, Essie, before God I love you above all the world!"
She gave a little sigh. She said: "Well, both of us—what's the sense to it, dear?" and she opened her fingers, and he saw her whizz, strike the face of the cliff where it jutted out, and pitch, and crash among the gorse and bracken, and roll over and over to the very edge of the outward lap above the sands, and caught there and lying there ... her jolly little dress for Whitecliffe lying there.