"Jenny," he said, "I knew I'd been a fool before I saw you again last first of May. I've known for four years what a fool and knave I'd been; but, oh, God, I never knew so clearly till the other day, till I'd hung about these cliffs waiting for you to come."
"Where was the good?" she asked. "It's years too late now."
"When I heard from Castleton where you were, I tried not to come. He told me I should make things worse. He said it would be a crime. And I tried not to all this winter. But you haunted me. I could not rest, and in April the desire to see you became a madness. I had to come."
"I think you acted very silly. It isn't as if you could do anything by coming. I never used to think about you."
"You didn't?" he repeated, agonized.
"Never. Never once," she stabbed. "I'd forgotten you."
"I deserve it."
"Of course you do. You can't mess up a girl's life and then come and say you're sorry the same as if you'd trod on her toe."
They were walking along involuntarily, and through the mist Jenny's words of sense, hardened to adamantine sharpness by suffering, cut clear and cruel and true. She did not like, however, to prosecute the close encounter in such a profusion of space. She fancied her words were lost in the great fog, and sought for some familiar outline that should point the way to Crickabella. Presently a narrow serpentine path gave her the direction.
"Along here," she said. "I can't talk up here. I feel as if there must be listeners in this fog. I wish it would get bright."