Masters reached the steps which led up from the sands to the seat. Standing at their base, he looked away in the direction of the sea. It was easy to mark the spot where Gracie had worked so hard with spade and pail.
He thought of the child with a pang of pity. For his heart had gone out to her; he had been captivated by her loving, winsome ways. Even now his eyes rested on where Gracie had built her last castle. He could mentally see her gleesomely watching the waters overflowing the moat and gradually sweeping down the castle's inverted pail-shaped turrets.
Gracie! Poor little soul! And so she, whom he had mistaken for the governess—this woman—was the mother of that incarnation of innocence and purity! What of the child's future? He shuddered to think of it; it was horrible; all horrible in the extreme.
Well, he would go home to his lodgings. First he would look again—for the last time—on that portion of the sands. For he felt that he would never be able to come there again. He would have been thankful for a breeze just then: his brow was feeling so fevered.
Perhaps there was more air on the seawall; he would test it, pass up the steps. There was the seat to avoid looking at; the seat whereon they had both sat reading—heart reading heart. Where had been born to him the happiest moment in life: love's awakening.
There was other history about the seat too: pencil created. Thereon, before that meeting, had been born heroes and heroines, wicked men and wicked women. All to be bound together and pressed between covers later on, to gladden or sadden readers' hearts.
Living a romance is less alluring than writing one: Masters found it so. He had been wont to believe in the parts he cast his characters for. He was learning!
Stumbling up the steps on to the wall, he started to walk home. But he halted, suddenly, before he had taken half-a-dozen paces. No drill sergeant's command ever brought up an absent-minded beggar on parade as did the words which fell on his ear.
"I thought that was you, Mr. Masters!"
Her voice! The voice of his shattered idol! The same voice: just as fresh and soft and kind as ever! Her voice, speaking to him! Could it be? Or was it a dream simply, a chimera of his brain? Or was this voice—this voice ringing, singing in his ears now—the result of his highly fevered imagination only?