With an effort Grange recovered himself. "Did you though? I wondered how you knew I was down here. Where were you?"
There was an abrupt tremor behind Nick's eyelids, but they remained closed. "I was on the top of the cliff, on my own ground, watching you."
Dead silence followed his answer—a silence through which the sound of the sea half a mile away swelled terribly, like the roar of a monster in torment.
Then at last Nick's eyes opened. He looked Grange straight in the face. "What are you going to do?" he said.
Grange's hands dropped heavily from the chair-arms, and his whole great frame drooped slowly forward. He made no further attempt at evasion, realising the utter futility of such a course.
"Do!" he said wearily. "Nothing."
"Nothing?" said Nick swiftly.
"No, nothing," he repeated, staring with a dull intentness at the ground between his feet. "It's an old story, and the less said about it the better. I can't discuss it with you or any one. I think it was a pity you took the trouble to watch me this afternoon."
He spoke with a certain dignity, albeit he refused to meet Nick's eyes. He looked unutterably tired.
Nick lay quite motionless in his chair, inscrutably still, save for the restless glitter behind his colourless eyelashes. At length, "Do you remember a conversation we had in this room a few months ago?" he asked.