Ah, what was that cry?  She came to her senses, startled, and looked fearfully round her.  She was alone on the cliffs, above the Moon Rock, and she could hear the sea hissing at its base.  But what else had she heard?  Had somebody called her name?  It was still very dark.  To the south the light of the Lizard stabbed the black sky with a white flaming finger as if seeking to pierce the darkness of eternity.  Nearer, the red light of the Wolf rock gleamed—­a warning to passing souls flying southward from England to eternal bliss to fly high above the rock where the spirit dog lay howling in wait.  Had the cry come from there?

“Sisily!  Sisily!”

No.  It was not the howl of the Wolf dog that she had heard.  That was her own name.  She crept closer to the edge of the cliff and looked down into the sea—­down at the Moon Rock.  The old Cornish legend of the drowned love came back to her.  Was Charles dead? and calling her to him?  She would go to him gladly.  She had loved him in life, and if he wanted her in death she would go to him.

She clutched a broken spur of rock on the brink and looked down to where the sea bored round the black sides of the Moon Rock.  She could see her own pool too, lying peaceful and calm in the encircling arm of the rock.  In her delirium she struggled to her feet and started to climb down the face of the cliff.

CHAPTER XXXII

The wind tapped angrily at the windows of Flint House, the rain fell stealthily, the sea made a droning uneasy sound.  The fire which burnt on the kitchen hearth was a poor one, a sullen thing of green boughs and coal which refused to harmonize, but spluttered and fizzed angrily.  The coal smouldered blackly, but sometimes cracked with a startling report.  When this happened, a crooked bough sticking up in the middle of the fire, like a curved fang, would jump out on to the hearthstone as though frightened by the noise.

Thalassa sat on one side of the fire, his wife on the other.  Her eyes were rapt and vacant; he sat with frowning brows, deep in thought.  Robert Turold’s dog crouched in the circle of the glow with amber eyes fixed on the old man’s face as if he were a god, and Thalassa lived up to one of the attributes of divinity by not deigning to give his worshipper a sign.  Occasionally the dog lifted a wistful supplicating paw, dropping it again in dejection when it passed unregarded.

Presently Thalassa got up and went to a cupboard in the corner.  From some hidden receptacle he extracted a coil of ship’s tobacco and a wooden pipe shaped into a negro’s head, with little beads for eyes, such as may be bought for a few pence in shops near the London docks.  He returned to his seat, filled the pipe, lit it with a burning bough, and fell to smoking with lingering whiffs, gazing into the fire with dark gleaming eyes as motionless as the glinting beads in the negro’s carved head.