‘I am so sorry,’ she said.  ‘It was the sudden feel o’ your hand on my shoulder that done it.  It seemed to burn me like, and then it made my blood seem scaldin’ hot.  If I’d only ‘a’ seed you come through the door I shouldn’t have had the fit.  The doctor told me the fits wur all gone now, and I feel sure as this is the last on ’em.  You must go to Knockers’ Llyn with me to-morrow mornin’ early.  I want you to go at the same time that we started when we tried that mornin’ to find Winnie.’

‘Then Rhona’s story is true,’ I thought.  ’Her delusion is that she is going to Knockers’ Llyn to be married.’

‘The weather’s goin’ to be just the same as it was then,’ she said, ‘and when we get to Knockers’ Llyn where you two breakfasted together, I want to play the crwth and sing the song just as I did then.’

She made no allusion to a wedding.  Getting up and pouring the boiling water from the kettle into the teapot, ‘Something tells me,’ she went on, ’that when I touch my crwth to-morrow, and when I sing them words by the side of Knockers’ Llyn, you’ll see the picture you want to see, the livin’ mullo o’ Winnie.’

‘Still no allusion to a wedding, but no doubt that will soon come,’ I murmured.

’I want to go the same way we went that day, and I want for you and me to see everythink as we seed it then from fust to last.’

I was haunted by Rhona Boswell’s words, and wondered when she would begin talking about the wedding at Knockers’ Llyn.

She never once alluded to it; but at intervals when the talk between us flagged I could hear her muttering, ’He must see everythink just as he seed it then from fust to last, and then it’s good-bye for ever.’

At last she said, ’I’ve had both the rooms upstairs made tidy to sleep in—­one for you and one for me.  I’ll call you in the mornin’ at the proper time.  Goodnight.’

I was not sorry to get this summary dismissal and be alone with my thoughts.  When I got to bed I was kept awake by recalling the sight I saw on entering the cottage.  There seemed no other explanation of it than this, the tragedy of Winifred had touched Sinfi’s sympathetic soul too deeply.  Her imagination had seized upon the spectacle of Winifred in one of her fits, and had caused so serious a disturbance of her nervous system that through sheer fascination of repulsion her face mimicked it exactly as Winifred’s face had mimicked the original spectacle of horror on the sands.

III

It was not yet dawn when I was aroused from the fitful slumber into which I had at last fallen by a sharp knocking at the door.  When I answered the summons by ‘All right, Sinfi,’ and heard her footsteps descend the stairs, the words of Rhona Boswell again came to me.

I found that I must return to the bungalow to get my bath.

The startled servant who let me in asked if there was anything the matter.  I explained my early rising by telling him that I was merely going to Knockers’ Llyn to see the sunrise.  He gave me a letter which had come on the previous evening, and had been addressed by mistake to Carnarvon.  As the handwriting was new to me, I felt sure that it was only an unimportant missive from some stranger, and I put it into my pocket without opening it.