His foreground had widened slightly and a figure stood in the middle of it.  There was something familiar in the blurred outlines, traced as if by a watery finger on the wall of mist.  An idea had taken shape stealthily behind him and flung its shadow there.  The idea was Lucia Harden.  The fog hung in her hair in drops like rain; it made her grey dress cling close about her straight, fine limbs; it gave its own grandeur and indistinctness to her solitary figure.

She turned, unstartled, but with an air of imperfect recognition.  He raised his hat; the hat with the green ribbon on it.

“I beg your pardon, but can you tell me the shortest cut to Harmouth?  I think I’ve lost my way.”

She answered absently.  “You are all right.  Turn to the left, and you’ll find the path along the cliff.  It will bring you out on to Harmouth beach.”

He followed the path she had pointed out.  Still absently she looked after him, a dim figure going down into the fog, and it occurred to her that she had sent him on a dangerous way.  There were rabbit wires and pitfalls on that path; places where the cliff was eaten away under its curling edge of turf, and for Mr. Rickman, who didn’t know his ground, a single step might mean death.

She could not see him now.  She called to him; “Mr. Rickman!” but there was no answer; only the sound of Mr. Rickman going down deeper.  She called again, a little imperiously, and yet again.  The last time her voice carried well, for there was the vibrating note of terror in it.  He turned and saw her coming down the path towards him.

“I forgot,” she said, still with the slight tremor of fear in her voice.  It seemed to draw out and intensify its sweetness.  “That path isn’t safe in a fog like this.  You had better go round by the road.”

“Oh, thanks.  You shouldn’t have troubled.  I should have got on all right.”  They were climbing up the moor together.

“I’m afraid you wouldn’t.  I wasn’t thinking, or I would never have sent you that way.”

“Why not?  It was a very good way.”

“Yes.  But you were going down into the thick of the fog.  You might easily have walked over the cliff—­and broken your neck.”

He laughed as if that was the most delightfully humorous idea.

“I don’t know,” said he, “that it would have mattered very much if I had.”

She said nothing.  She never did when he made these excursions into the personal.  Of course it would not have mattered to Miss Harden if he had gone over the cliff.  He had been guilty, not only of an unpardonable social solecism, but of a still more unpardonable platitude.

They had reached the top of the cliff, and Lucia stood still.

“Isn’t there another short cut cut across the valley?” he asked.

“There is; but I don’t advise you to try it.  And there is a way round by the road—­if you can find it.”

He smiled.  Had he tried to approach her too soon, and was she reminding him that short cuts are dangerous?  There was a way round—­if he could find it.  If indeed!