He stopped suddenly and dropped his head, ashamed that he had let his passion ride him so recklessly, limp after his outburst, sick at heart for the truth of his words.
Valerie sat very still, exultation and anxiety fighting for a grip on her heart. Anthony had told his love, raved of her, called her by name. (Anxiety's claw-like fingers began to yield.) The very intensity of his utterance declared his conviction that he must give her up. The exceeding bitterness of his tone rang too true to be ill-founded. (Exultation's clutch weakened, and Anxiety took a fresh hold.) Of a sudden Valerie felt persuaded that Time could win her battle, could she but gain his aid. As if to establish this persuasion, the reflection that the old fellow had straightened more crookedness than any other minister of love came to her hotfoot, and then and there she made up her mind to court him. She yearned to put her arms about her man's neck, but felt that somehow that way lay ruin. Anthony being what he was, it was all-important that she should not show him her hand. He had seen—should see a card or two, certainly. That the rest were the same, card for card, as those he had just flung down, in his present mood he must on no account realize. Such knowledge were fatal. He would, presumably, kiss her, and then call Patch and walk out of her life for ever. So long, however, as he did not believe her lovesick, he would—well, he would not disappear, at any rate. There are who lay hold on hopelessness rather faster than they lay hold on life….
"Anthony, dear," said Valerie, "let's—please don't let go of my hand—let's look for a way out. You know, I think——"
What she would have said should not matter to us. We have peered into her brain-pan. The sentence, however, was never completed, and that for a reason which shall pass muster.
On perceiving that Valerie and he were moving, Anthony for a moment of time suspected an earthquake. Almost instantaneously he appreciated that, while it affected him pretty closely, it was a much smaller matter—nothing more, in fact, than the giving way of that portion of the cliff upon which the two were disposed. It was typical of the man that he neither swore nor cried out, and of the soldier that he thought and acted simultaneously…. By the mercy of Heaven, he was, as you know, upon one knee. Had he been sitting, like his companion, they must have gone with the avalanche. As it was, they were able, after a painful silence, to hear this crash evilly with a dull roar into the pinewood.
The echoes rumbled curiously into the distance, and a startled medley of cries rose from all manner of birds, which soared out of their shelter, dismayed and whirling. One bird was fairly gibbering. Miss French and Lyveden both noticed it. Valerie found herself wondering whether it had lost its wits.
For the perfection to which their senses focussed these and other very ordinary things, their plight was responsible. It has been said that the faculty of observation is never so pronounced as when the observer is face to face with Death. Anthony and the lady were looking him in the eyes. The pair of them was, in fact, hanging in space, dangling two hundred feet up, with an inch and a half of ash-plant between them and Eternity.
With his right hand Lyveden was grasping the slender trunk of a sapling which grew three feet to an inch from the new edge of the bluff. As he was, arm and all, at full length, it follows that from the breast-bone downwards the whole of him was over the cliff. Valerie was altogether in mid-air. She was directly suspended, with her back flat against Anthony, by the latter's left arm, which if he had released she would have fallen plumb into the pinewood….
In a quiet voice Lyveden was speaking.
"Try and free your right arm."