They sat down together on a long flat stone half embedded in a wiry clump of whortleberries.  Behind them the lonely hillsides rose, brilliant with yellow bracken and the purple of heather.  Before them stretched the wide sea.  It was a soft, gray day.  Streaks of pale sunlight trembled at moments far out on the water.  The tide was rising in the little bay above which they sat, and Broomhurst watched the lazy foam-edged waves slipping over the uncovered rocks toward the shore, then sliding back as though for very weariness they despaired of reaching it.  The muffled, pulsing sound of the sea filled the silence.  Broomhurst thought suddenly of hot Eastern sunshine, of the whir of insect wings on the still air, and the creaking of a wheel in the distance.  He turned and looked at his companion.

“I have come thousands of miles to see you,” he said; “aren’t you going to speak to me now I am here?”

“Why did you come?  I told you not to come,” she answered, falteringly.  “I—­” she paused.

“And I replied that I should follow you—­if you remember,” he answered, still quietly.  “I came because I would not listen to what you said then, at that awful time.  You didn’t know yourself what you said.  No wonder!  I have given you some months, and now I have come.”

There was silence between them.  Broomhurst saw that she was crying; her tears fell fast on to her hands, that were clasped in her lap.  Her face, he noticed, was thin and drawn.

Very gently he put his arm round her shoulder and drew her nearer to him.  She made no resistance; it seemed that she did not notice the movement; and his arm dropped at his side.

“You asked me why I had come.  You think it possible that three months can change one very thoroughly, then?” he said, in a cold voice.

“I not only think it possible; I have proved it,” she replied, wearily.

He turned round and faced her.

“You did love me, Kathleen!” he asserted.  “You never said so in words, but I know it,” he added, fiercely.

“Yes, I did.”

“And—­you mean that you don’t now?”

Her voice was very tired.  “Yes; I can’t help it,” she answered; “it has gone—­utterly.”

The gray sea slowly lapped the rocks.  Overhead the sharp scream of a gull cut through the stillness.  It was broken again, a moment afterward, by a short hard laugh from the man.

“Don’t!” she whispered, and laid a hand swiftly on his arm.  “Do you think it isn’t worse for me?  I wish to God I did love you!” she cried, passionately.  “Perhaps it would make me forget that, to all intents and purposes, I am a murderess.”

Broomhurst met her wide, despairing eyes with an amazement which yielded to sudden pitying comprehension.

“So that is it, my darling?  You are worrying about that?  You who were as loyal as—­”

She stopped him with a frantic gesture.