“The lady was out, but the gentleman would likely find her if he went to the cliffs—down by the bay, or thereabouts,” her landlady explained, and, obeying her directions, Broomhurst presently emerged from the shady woodland path on to the hillside overhanging the sea.
He glanced eagerly round him, and then with a sudden quickening of the heart, walked on over the springy heather to where she sat. She turned when the rustling his footsteps made through the bracken was near enough to arrest her attention, and looked up at him as he came. Then she rose slowly and stood waiting for him. He came up to her without a word and seized both her hands, devouring her face with his eyes. Something he saw there repelled him. Slowly he let her hands fall, still looking at her silently. “You are not glad to see me, and I have counted the hours,” he said at last in a dull toneless voice.
Her lips quivered. “Don't be angry with me—I can't help it—I'm not glad or sorry for anything now,” she answered, and her voice matched his for greyness.
They sat down together on a long flat stone half embedded in a wiry clump of whortleberries. Behind them the lonely hillsides rose, brilliant with yellow bracken and the purple of heather. Before them stretched the wide sea. It was a soft grey day. Streaks of pale sunlight trembled at moments far out on the water. The tide was rising in the little bay above which they sat, and Broomhurst watched the lazy foam-edged waves slipping over the uncovered rocks towards the shore, then sliding back as though for very weariness they despaired of reaching it. The muffled pulsing sound of the sea filled the silence. Broomhurst thought suddenly of hot Eastern sunshine, of the whirr of insect wings on the still air, and the creaking of a wheel in the distance. He turned and looked at his companion.
“I have come thousands of miles to see you,” he said; “aren't you going to speak to me now I am here?”
“Why did you come? I told you not to come,” she answered, falteringly. “I——” she paused.
“And I replied that I should follow you—if you remember,” he answered, still quietly. “I came because I would not listen to what you said then, at that awful time. You didn't know yourself what you said. No wonder! I have given you some months, and now I have come.”
There was silence between them. Broomhurst saw that she was crying; her tears fell fast on to her hands, that were clasped in her lap. Her face, he noticed, was thin and drawn.
Very gently he put his arm round her shoulder and drew her nearer to him. She made no resistance—it seemed that she did not notice the movement; and his arm dropped at his side.
“You asked me why I had come? You think it possible that three months can change one, very thoroughly, then?” he said in a cold voice.