The sound of the turret-door banging behind him recalled him to his surroundings. He awoke to the fact that the wind was chill, and that a drift of rain was coming in from the sea. With an impatient shrug he turned. Why was he lingering here like a drunken reveller at a table of spilt wine? He would go down to his yacht and find Larpent—Larpent who had also loved and lost. They would go out on the turn of the tide—the two losers in the game of life—and leave the spilt wine behind them.
Impulsively he strode back along the ramparts. The game was over, and he would never play again; but at least he would face the issue like a man. No one, not even Larpent, should ever see him flinch. So he reached the turret-door, and came abruptly to a halt.
It was no vision that showed her to him, standing there in her slender fairness, wrapt in a cloak that glimmered vaguely blue in the glimmering starlight. Her face was very pale, and he saw her frightened eyes as she stood before him. Her hands were tightly clasped together, and she spoke no word at all.
The door was shut behind her, and he saw that she was trembling from head to foot.
He stood motionless, within reach of her, but not touching her. "Well?" he said.
She made a curious gesture with her clasped hands, standing before him as she had stood on board his yacht on that night in the Mediterranean when she had come to him for refuge.
"I've come," she said, in a voice that quivered uncontrollably, "to tell you something."
Saltash did not stir. His face was in shadow, but there was a suggestion of tension about his attitude that was not reassuring. "Well?" he said again.
She wrung her hands together with a desperate effort to subdue her agitation, and began again, "I've come—to tell you something."
"Something I don't know?" he questioned cynically.