"There's lots of things you don't know about," said Wilf. "However, if you're bent on ending it all, I shan't try to stop you. I aren't one to force myself upon a girl that doesn't want me."
Caroline's lip began to tremble "Wilf, if I'd known about you giving up the motor-bike I wouldn't never have spoken as I did. I do feel a beast. But you have to think about yourself in this world or nobody'll think for you. I can't see any reason in going on as we are doing for years and then getting married when we're both dead sick of it all and of each other. We only keep each other back. We should be better free."
"Meaning you want to be free?" He had to pause a minute, owing to a thickness in his throat. "All right. I shan't hold you to it. You go and see if you can find a chap that can marry you straight off. That's what you want. You'd never have broken with me if I'd had a big house and plenty of money. I should not have been too young for you then. You'd not have had to chuck me over then, to better yourself."
She was weeping now—very grieved to hurt him, and yet, beneath her softness, an iron determination to do what was best for herself; no thought of sacrifice because of his pain entering her head. "I'm so sorry, Wilf. I'm so sorry," she murmured.
But he felt she was implacable. She was armoured by that phrase of hers, she'd "got to do the best for herself," and he knew he had no weapon to pierce that armour.
They both stood on the edge of the cliff in silence, looking towards the north where the Flamborough lights gleamed out at regular intervals across the dark water. The promenade lay behind them, a fringe of pale lights twinkling along the shore.
Caroline was crying for the sorrow she had given Wilf, but that only lay on the surface, though genuine enough. Beneath that, all unknowing, she mourned a loss which nothing could restore. She and Wilf had given each other that first bloom of young attraction—bright glances, touches, cool kisses almost without passion—and no power could bring that back. They felt miserable, standing there with the little waves coming in—whish! whish!—upon the gravelly patch of sand: for there lay at the bottom of their hearts a sense of something irretrievably wasted, which they could never have in life any more.
"Well." He spoke first, bitterly. "I hope you may get your rich chap. As you've no more need for me, I may as well go."
"I'm not throwing you over for that, Wilf," said Caroline in a low voice.
His subdued mood spurted up with a sudden irritability of jarred nerves again. "Then what are you for? That's what I should like to know."