I was almost startled when she turned round, and I saw her face quite plainly.  The same light that revealed her pretty little face and figure, threw a deeper shade over me.  She looked anxiously up and down, yet by a singular fatality never looked at the corner of the wooden building where I sat.  I have often wondered since that I did not cry out when I saw that face—­so wonderfully beautiful, but so marble white, so sad, so intent, so earnest, the beautiful eyes wild with pain, the beautiful mouth quivering.  I can see it now, and I shall see it until I die.

There was a low, broad brow, and golden-brown hair clustered on it—­hair that was like a crown; the face was oval-shaped, exquisitely beautiful, with a short upper lip, a full, lovely under one, and a perfectly modeled chin.  But it was the face of a woman almost mad with despair.

“Oh, Heaven! if I dare—­if I dare!” she cried.  She flung up her hands with the gesture of one who has no hope; she looked over at the sea, once more at the pier, then slowly turned away, and again quite plainly I heard the words, “Oh, Heaven! if I dare—­if I dare!”

She then walked slowly away, and I lost sight of her under the silent arches; but I could not forget her.  What a face!—­what beauty, what passion, what pain, what love and despair, what goodness and power!  What a face!  When should I ever forget it?

Impelled by curiosity, I went to the railings, and I stood where she stood.  I looked down.  How deep and fathomless it seemed, this running sea!  What was it she had dropped there?  In my mind’s eye I saw a most pathetic little bundle made of love-letters; I pictured them tied with a pretty faded ribbon; there would be dried flowers, each one a momento of some happy occasion.  I could fancy the dried roses, the withered forget-me-nots, the violets, with some faint odor lingering still around them.  Then there would be a valentine, perhaps two or three; a photograph, and probably an engagement ring.  She had flung them away into the depths of the sea, and only Heaven knows what hopes and love she had flung with them!  I could understand now what that cry meant—­“If I dare—­if I dare!”

It meant that if she dare she would fling herself into the sea after them!  How many hopes had been flung, like hers, into those black depths!

Then I came to the conclusion that I was, to say the least of it, a simpleton to waste so much time and thought about another person’s affairs.

I remember that, as I walked slowly down the pier, I met several people, and that I felt a glow of pleasure at the thought that some people had the good sense to prefer the Chain Pier.  And then I went home.

A game at billiards, a long chat in the smoke-room, ought to have distracted my mind from the little incident I had witnessed, but it did not.  My bed-room faced the sea, and I drew up the blind so that I might look at it once more.  The beautiful sea has many weird aspects, none stranger than when it lies heaving sullenly under the light of the moon.  Fascinated, charmed, I stood to watch it.  The moon had changed her mind; she meant to shine now; the clouds had all vanished; the sky was dark and blue; the stars were shining; but the wind had quickened, and the waves rolled in briskly, with white, silvery foam marking their progress.