Julian was startled, and slightly turned colour.
"It is not true," she said hastily, recovering herself, "he has gone off to serve with the Duke of Monmouth."
"I killed him," answered Urith composedly. "I would never, never let you have him, draw him from me. I am not sorry. I am glad. I killed him."
"What!" with a sudden exultation, "you know he would have been drawn by me away! I conquered."
"You did not get him away," said Urith, "you could not—for I killed him."
Julian put out her staff again, and touched Urith.
"Listen to me!" she said, and there was triumph in her tone. "He never loved you. No never. Me he loved; me he always had loved. But his father tried to force him, he quarrelled with him, and out of waywardness, to defy his father to show his independence, he married you; but he never, never loved you."
"That is false," answered Urith, and she slowly rose on the platform to her feet. "That is false. He did love me. Here on this stone he held me to his heart, here he held me aloft and made me promise to be his very own."
"It was naught!" exclaimed Julian. "A passing fancy. Come—I know not whether he be alive or dead. Some say one thing and some another, but this I do know, that if he be alive, the world will be too narrow for you and me together in it, and if he be dead—it is indifferent to both whether we live, for to you and me alike is Anthony the sun that rules us, in whose light we have our joy. Come! Let us have another hitch, as the wrestlers say, and see which gives the other the turn."
Urith, in her half-dreamy condition, in rising to her feet, had taken hold of the end of Julian's staff, and now stood looking down the abyss to the tossing, thundering water, still holding the end.