He strained his ears, fearful of hearing her slip or fall in the darkness, but she went without displacing a stone, and he was alone with the sickly moon, and the sombre sky, and the voices of the rising tide along the grim black ledges of his sanctuary.
CHAPTER XXI
HOW LOVE TOOK LOVE TO SANCTUARY
It all seemed monstrous strange to him, now that he had time to think of the actual fact apart from the difficulties of its accomplishment.
An hour ago he was lying in his bed at Plaisance, in low enough spirits, indeed, at the outlook before him, but his gloomiest thought had never plumbed depths such as this.
He wondered briefly if so extreme a step had been really necessary.
And then he heard again the purposeful tramp of those heavy feet on the Coupée, and fathomed again the menace of them.
And he felt Nance's guiding hand trembling violently in his once more, and he said to himself that she and Bernel knew better than he how the land lay, and that he could not have done other than he had done.
Then he became aware that the dew was drenching him, and so he bent and groped in the dark for the shelter Nance had spoken of.