"Permit me to precede you," said Bertrand. "You will find it not so narrow in a moment. If you look behind you, you will see the sea as in the frame of a picture. It is beautiful, is it not?"
His soft voice and casual words reassured her. She looked and admired, though the sea was grey and the shore all blurred with rain.
"There will be a rainbow soon," he said. "See! It grows more light already."
But he was looking at her as he spoke, though his glance fell directly she turned towards him.
"Do you come here often?" she asked.
"But very often," he said.
"And what do you do here?"
"I will show you by and bye."
"Very well," she said eagerly. "Then we won't go any farther when we have found Cinders."
But this last suggestion was not so easy of accomplishment. The darkness had swallowed Cinders as completely as though the jaws of the dragon had closed upon him.