“Yes, it is provoking to be chained to one woman when you are dying for another.”
“How much oftener am I to swear to you that I don’t care a straw for Miss Darcy?”
“Never again,” she answered. “I love you too well to wish you to swear a lie.”
They had come down from the common by this time, and were now upon a pathway nearer home—a narrow footpath on the edge of the cliff opposite Beaulieu; the gently-curving bay below them, and behind and above them orchards and gardens, hill and lighthouse. It was one of their chosen walks. They had paced the narrow path many an afternoon when the twin towers of Monaco showed dark in the shadow of sundown.
“Vivien, I think you are the most difficult creature to live with that ever a man had for his wife,” said Ransome, stung to the quick by her persistent perversity.
“I am difficult to live with, am I?” she cried. “Why don’t you go a step further—why don’t you say at once that you wish I were dead?” she cried, with a wild burst of passion. “Say that you wish me dead.”
“I own that when you torment me, as you are doing to-day, I have sometimes thought of death—yours or mine—as the only escape from mutual misery,” he answered gloomily.
He had been sauntering a few paces in front of her along the narrow path between the olive-garden and the edge of the cliff, she following slowly—both in a desultory way, and talking to each other without seeing each other’s face. The cliff sank sheer below the pathway, with only a narrow margin of rushy grass between the footpath and the brink of the precipice. It was no stupendous depth, no giddy height from which the eye glanced downward, sickening at the horror of the gulf. One looked down at the jewel-bright waves and the many-hued rocks, the fir-trees growing out of the crags, without a thought of danger; and yet a false step upon those sunburnt rushes might mean instant death.
He came to a sudden standstill after that last speech, and stood leaning with both hands upon his stick, angry, full of gloom, feeling that he had said a cruel thing, yet not repenting of his cruelty. He stood there expectant of her angry answer; but there was only silence.
Silence, and then a swift rushing sound, like the flight of a great bird. He looked round, and saw that he was alone!