"You think so. You wait! Perhaps your turn will come. But I forgot," she laughed again. "Your man won't have the chance to leave you—there, I beg your pardon," for Leslie had shrunk away from her. "Don't mind me or what I say. I'm half out of my mind. I've had no sleep since—since he left me, and I've come a long journey, and eaten nothing. Yes, I'm half mad. I was a fool to follow him. I ought to have stayed at home; but I've got my punishment."
"You came after him? He is here, then?" asked Leslie in a pitying whisper, watching the waves as she spoke.
"Yes," said she; then with a sigh, "Yes, and I've seen him. I meant to speak to him, to—to—try and get him back; but my heart failed me, and I crept out here to be alone. It wasn't only to see him that I came. I wanted to see her."
"Her?" repeated Leslie, half absently.
"Yes. The woman that stole him from me. But it doesn't matter now. Nothing matters to us two, does it? How much longer?"
The question almost drove Leslie frantic with agony, the anguish of despair. It was all very well for this poor creature, abandoned, deserted by the man she loved, to take death so coolly; but she, Leslie, was not deserted and unhappy. Her lover, her Yorke, was going to make her his wife; in a few days, a few hours, he would be waiting for her. Yorke, Yorke! Her heart called to him. And though the name did not leave her lips, the voice within her seemed to give her courage, to fill her with a fierce, almost savage, determination to live.
She looked up at the cliff with straining eyes. It was almost perpendicular and smooth just above them, but a little further along there were a few scrubby bushes projecting from the surface. It was just possible, if they could reach those, that they might at least gain some few inches of foothold. Just possible, though the mere thought of the attempt made her tremble.
"What are you staring up there for?" asked her companion. "You couldn't climb it, if you tried."
"No," panted Leslie. "But we will try!"