“Has Miss Sisily been here?”

The sight of those long outstretched hands, by their menace to her life, seemed to restore her reason.  “Yes,” she mumbled.

“When?”

“This evening—­before dark—­when you were out.”

“And you wouldn’t let her in?”

“No.”

“How did you know it was her?”

“She knocked at the door, and I looked out of the window.”

“Did you see which way she went?”

“Over by the cliffs, where she used to go.”

Thalassa repeated these last words mechanically.  Anger possessed him, but apprehension stirred in his heart.  Sisily had trusted him, she had come back to him, and he had failed her.  That had been at six o’clock, and it was now nine.  Three hours, and there had been a storm.  Where was she?  Had she been out in the storm?

He searched in the cupboard for a lantern, lit it, and made for the door, followed by the dog.  As he flung open the door the wind rushed in with such force that it beat him back, and the candle in the lantern flickered and lengthened like a naked flame.  He fought his way out furiously, slamming the door behind him.

Outside, the rocks crouched in the darkness in nameless shapes.  Thalassa prowled among them, struggling desperately with the wind, telling himself that she was safe—­yes, by God, she was safe.  Of course she wouldn’t stay on the rocks in that storm.  She would seek shelter.  “Where?” asked something within him mockingly, “Where would she dare go, except to you?” He stood still to reflect.  “She might go to Dr. Ravenshaw’s,” he said aloud, as though answering an unseen but real questioner.  “Fool!” came the reply, “you know she would not go to Dr. Ravenshaw’s.  She would not dare.”  And fear gripped his heart coldly.

He stumbled on again, bruising and cutting his limbs among the rocks.  As he went he kept calling her name—­“Miss Sisily” at first, and then, as his fear grew stronger, “Sisily, Sisily!” The wind wailed back to him, but that was all.

He stopped again to reflect.  It was useless looking for her in the darkness.  He could do nothing until the moon was up.  The sky was already beginning to brighten with the coming light.  So he stood where he was, waiting.

In a quarter of an hour the moon showed above the horizon, slurred through the rain, like a great drowned face.  Higher and higher it rose until the black curtain lifted off the moors, and the light shimmered on little pools left after the rain, made fretwork in the shadows of the rocks, and fell upon the surface of the sea.  And as the moon rose the hideous uproar of wind and sea began to die away.

Thalassa threw down the lantern, and resumed his search.  Carefully he explored in and out among the rude masses of rock, beating farther and farther away from the house, cautiously skirting the perpendicular edge of the cliffs, looking over, and backing away again.  His wider cast brought him at length to where the Moon Rock rose from the turmoil of the sea.  He crept on hands and knees to the bald face of the cliff, and looked down.