The plain of Pevensey lay like a vision of fairyland, the colouring indescribably delicate, unreal; bands of dark green alternated with the palest and most translucent emeralds.  The long stretch of the coast was a faint outline, yet so clear that every tongue of sand, every smallest headland was distinguishable.  The sky that rested on the eastern semicircle of horizon was rather neutral tint than blue, and in it hung long clouds of the colour of faded daffodils.  A glance overhead gave the reason of this wondrous effect of light; there, and away to the west, brooded a vast black storm-cloud, ragged at the edge, yet seeming motionless; the western sea was very night, its gloom intensified by one slip of silver shimmer, wherein a sail was revealed.  The hillside immediately in front of those who stood here was so deeply shadowed that its contrast threw the vision of unearthly light into distance immeasurable.  A wind was rising, but, though its low whistling sound was very audible, it seemed to be in the upper air; here scarcely a breath was felt.

Annabel said: 

’Have you seen Thyrza’s portrait?

‘Yes.’

She raised her eyes; they were sad, compassionate, yet smiled.

’She could not have lived.  But you are conscious now of what that face means?’

’I know nothing of her history from the day when I last saw her, except the mere outward circumstances.’

’Nor do I. But I saw her once, here, and I have seen her portrait.  The crisis of your life was there.  There was your one great opportunity, and you let it pass.  She could not have lived; but that is no matter.  You were tried, Mr. Egremont, and found Wanting.’

’Her love for me did not continue.  It was already too late at the end of those two years.

‘Was it?’

‘What secret knowledge have you?’

‘None whatever, as you mean it.  But it was not too late.’

They were silent.  And as they stood thus the sky was again transformed.  A steady yet soft wind from the northwest was propelling the great black cloud seaward, over to France; it moved in a solid mass, its ragged edges little by little broken off, its bulk detached from the night which lay behind it.  And in the sky which it disclosed rose as it were a pale dawn, the restored twilight.  Thereamid glimmered the pole-star.

Eastward on the coast, at the far end of Pevensey Bay, the lights of Hastings began to twinkle; out at sea was visible a single gleam, appearing and disappearing, the lightship on the Sovereign Shoals.

Annabel continued speaking: 

’We have both missed something, something that will never again he offered us.  When you asked me to be your wife, four years ago at Ullswater, I did not love you.  I admired you; I liked you; it would have been very possible to me to marry you.  But I had my ideal of love, and I hoped to give my husband something more than I felt for you at that time.  A year after, I loved you.  I suffered when you were suffering.  I was envious of the love you gave to another woman, and I said to myself that the moment I hoped for had come only in vain.  Since then I have changed more than I changed in those twelve months.  I am not in love with you now; I can talk of these things without a flutter of the pulse.  Is it not true?’