She did not turn round for some time after she was fairly lost to the sight of any one on the shore; she clambered on, almost stunned by the rapid beating of her heart.  Her eyes were hot and dry; and at last became as if she were suddenly blind.  Unable to go on, she tottered into the tangled underwood which grew among the stones, filling every niche and crevice, and little shelving space, with green and delicate tracery.  She sank down behind a great overhanging rock, which hid her from any one coming up the path.  An ash-tree was rooted in this rock, slanting away from the sea-breezes that were prevalent in most weathers; but this was a still, autumnal Sabbath evening.  As Ruth’s limbs fell, so they lay.  She had no strength, no power of volition to move a finger.  She could not think or remember.  She was literally stunned.  The first sharp sensation which roused her from her torpor was a quick desire to see him once more; up she sprang, and climbed to an out-jutting dizzy point of rock, but a little above her sheltered nook, yet commanding a wide view over the bare, naked sands;—­far away below, touching the rippling water-line, was Stephen Bromley, busily gathering in his nets; besides him there was no living creature visible.  Ruth shaded her eyes, as if she thought they might have deceived her; but no, there was no one there.  She went slowly down to her old place, crying sadly as she went.

“Oh! if I had not spoken so angrily to him—­the last things I said were so bitter—­so reproachful!—­and I shall never, never see him again!”

She could not take in a general view and scope of their conversation—­the event was too near her for that; but her heart felt sore at the echo of her last words, just and true as their severity was.  Her struggle, her constant flowing tears, which fell from very weakness, made her experience a sensation of intense bodily fatigue; and her soul had lost the power of throwing itself forward, or contemplating anything beyond the dreary present, when the expanse of grey, wild, bleak moors, stretching wide away below a sunless sky, seemed only an outward sign of the waste world within her heart, for which she could claim no sympathy;-for she could not even define what its woes were; and, if she could, no one would understand how the present time was haunted by the terrible ghost of the former love.

“I am so weary!  I am so weary!” she moaned aloud at last.  “I wonder if I might stop here, and just die away.”

She shut her eyes, until through the closed lids came a ruddy blaze of light.  The clouds bad parted away, and the sun was going down in the crimson glory behind the distant purple hills.  The whole western sky was one flame of fire.  Ruth forgot herself in looking at the gorgeous sight.  She sat up gazing; and, as she gazed, the tears dried on her cheeks, and, somehow, all human care and sorrow were swallowed up in the unconscious sense of God’s infinity.  The sunset calmed her more than any words, however wise and tender, could have done.  It even seemed to give her strength and courage; she did not know how or why, but so it was.