“Your husband must have treated you very badly, before you would take such a desperate step as this,” I said again, after a long silence, scarcely knowing what I said.

“He treated me so ill,” said Olivia, with the same hard tone in her voice, “that when I had a chance of escape it seemed as if God Himself opened the door for me.  He treated me so ill that, if I thought there was any fear of him finding me out here, I would rather a thousand times you had left me to die in the caves.”

That brought to my mind what I had almost forgotten—­the woman whom my imprudent curiosity had brought into pursuit; of her.  I felt ready to curse my folly aloud, as I did in my heart, for having gone to Messrs. Scott and Brown.

“Olivia,” I said, “there is a woman in Guernsey who has some clew to you—­”

But I could say no more, for I thought she would have fallen to the ground in her terror.  I drew her hand through my arm, and hastened to reassure her.

“No harm can come to you,” I continued, “while Tardif and I are here to protect you.  Do not frighten yourself; we will defend you from every danger.”

“Martin,” she whispered—­and the pleasant familiarity of my name spoken by her gave me a sharp pang, almost of gladness—­“no one can help me or defend me.  The law would compel me to go back to him.  A woman’s heart may be broken without the law being broken.  I could prove nothing that would give me a right to be free—­nothing.  So I took it into my own hands.  I tell you I would rather have been drowned this afternoon.  Why did you save me?”

I did not answer, except by pressing her hand against my side.  I hurried her on silently toward the cottage.  She was shivering in her cold, wet dress, and trembling with fear.  It was plain to me that even her fine health should not be trifled with, and I loved her too tenderly, her poor, shivering, trembling frame, to let her suffer if I could help it.  When we reached the fold-yard gate, I stopped her for a moment to speak only a few words.

“Go in.”  I said, “and change, every one of your wet clothes.  I will see you again, once again, when we can talk with one another calmly.  God bless and take care of you, my darling!”

She smiled faintly, and laid her hand in mine.

“You forgive me?” she said.

“Forgive you!” I repeated, kissing the small brown hand lingeringly; “I have nothing to forgive.”

She went on across the little fold and into the house, without looking back toward me.  I could see her pass through the kitchen into her own room, where I had watched her through the struggle between life and death, which had first made her dear to me.  Then I made my way, blind and deaf, to the edge of the cliff, seeing nothing, hearing-nothing.  I flung myself down on the turf with my face to the ground, to hide my eyes from the staring light of the summer sun.