“What do I want, O Man whom I love?  I want a white house within high, white walls, on the edge of the sea.  I want my arms full of children—­yours and mine.  I want love, oh! love and yet more love, that is what I want!”

The man twisted her round and held her at arms’ length, her heels within an inch of the edge, her body bent back over the chasm, and her hair, spreading like a banner in the tearing wind, swept about his shoulders and across his face, intoxicating him with its perfume and silken caress.

Passion swept over him, he shook her like a reed, and her foot slipped off the earth into nothingness.

But not a word said she, though she prayed that he might suddenly let go his hold and send her crashing to sweet death on the rocks beneath.

You see what happens when you are decent and honest and have a mind to keep your word—­just death rather than dishonour, and pain to others.

Whereas if only she had been dishonest, and therefore commonplace, she would either have chucked her given word to the devil, or the deep grey sea over which she stood, and cleared for her own happiness and a marriage licence; or kept her word in one sense while making deedy little plans of triangular pattern for future reference.

“Is that what you want, oh! heart of mine?” said Jan Cuxson, exulting in the sensation that his hands alone held her metaphorically and actually safe from the depths beneath.  “And that is what I am going to give you, beloved, and more, much more in exchange for the treasure you will put into my hands.  Oh!  Leonie, my love——­”

And yet he did not kiss her, but pulled her farther inland and let her go as she essayed to free herself, having come to the absolute breaking point.

What a wooing!

The copper coloured clouds were massed above and about them, the trees bent and straightened and bent again before the wind, the sea heaved in huge unbroken waves right to the horizon; Lundy Island, Hartland, and Baggy Point had disappeared in a driving sheet of rain.

How beautiful she looked as she stood in the storm, cut, bruised and dishevelled.

Just for one moment she looked into the eyes of the man she loved, whose hands were outstretched for the treasures she could not lay therein; and then she turned and fled as a great streak of lightning rent the clouds, and thunder like heavy artillery crashed about their heads.

She had not gone twenty yards when she stumbled and fell heavily.

Her boots were being hurled here and there by the waves in the cove where she had left them; her left foot was cut and bleeding badly, but a sudden desperate courage came to her when she felt herself raised and steadied.

“I shall carry you to the foot of the hill near your cottage!”

She struggled as he lifted her, struggled so violently that he put her on her feet.

“Don’t touch me, Jan, don’t come near me, because I—­because——­”