‘Will you not explain to me?’ she faintly urged.  Doubt—­indefinite, carking doubt had taken possession of her.

‘Not now.  You alarm yourself unnecessarily,’ he said tenderly.  ’My only reason for keeping silence is that with my present knowledge I may tell an untrue story.  It may be that there is nothing to tell.  I am to blame for haste in alluding to any such thing.  Forgive me, sweet—­forgive me.’  Her heart was ready to burst, and she could not answer him.  He returned to his place and took to the oars.

They again made for the distant Esplanade, now, with its line of houses, lying like a dark grey band against the light western sky.  The sun had set, and a star or two began to peep out.  They drew nearer their destination, Edward as he pulled tracing listlessly with his eyes the red stripes upon her scarf, which grew to appear as black ones in the increasing dusk of evening.  She surveyed the long line of lamps on the sea-wall of the town, now looking small and yellow, and seeming to send long tap-roots of fire quivering down deep into the sea.  By-and-by they reached the landing-steps.  He took her hand as before, and found it as cold as the water about them.  It was not relinquished till he reached her door.  His assurance had not removed the constraint of her manner:  he saw that she blamed him mutely and with her eyes, like a captured sparrow.  Left alone, he went and seated himself in a chair on the Esplanade.

Neither could she go indoors to her solitary room, feeling as she did in such a state of desperate heaviness.  When Springrove was out of sight she turned back, and arrived at the corner just in time to see him sit down.  Then she glided pensively along the pavement behind him, forgetting herself to marble like Melancholy herself as she mused in his neighbourhood unseen.  She heard, without heeding, the notes of pianos and singing voices from the fashionable houses at her back, from the open windows of which the lamp-light streamed to join that of the orange-hued full moon, newly risen over the Bay in front.  Then Edward began to pace up and down, and Cytherea, fearing that he would notice her, hastened homeward, flinging him a last look as she passed out of sight.  No promise from him to write:  no request that she herself would do so—­nothing but an indefinite expression of hope in the face of some fear unknown to her.  Alas, alas!

When Owen returned he found she was not in the small sitting-room, and creeping upstairs into her bedroom with a light, he discovered her there lying asleep upon the coverlet of the bed, still with her hat and jacket on.  She had flung herself down on entering, and succumbed to the unwonted oppressiveness that ever attends full-blown love.  The wet traces of tears were yet visible upon her long drooping lashes.

     ’Love is a sowre delight, and sugred griefe,
     A living death, and ever-dying life.’

‘Cytherea,’ he whispered, kissing her.  She awoke with a start, and vented an exclamation before recovering her judgment.  ‘He’s gone!’ she said.