We sat for some minutes and talked.  Le Geyt would not speak of Clara; and when I asked him his intentions, he shook his head moodily.  “I shall act for the best,” he said—­“what of best is left—­to guard the dear children.  It was a terrible price to pay for their redemption; but it was the only one possible, and, in a moment of wrath, I paid it.  Now, I have to pay, in turn, myself.  I do not shirk it.”

“You will come back to London, then, and stand your trial?” I asked, eagerly.

“Come back to London?” he cried, with a face of white panic.  Hitherto he had seemed to me rather relieved in expression than otherwise; his countenance had lost its worn and anxious look; he was no longer watching each moment over his children’s safety.  “Come back . . .  To London . . . and face my trial!  Why, did you think, Hubert, ’twas the court or the hanging I was shirking?  No, no; not that; but it—­the red horror!  I must get away from it to the sea—­to the water—­to wash away the stain—­as far from it—­that red pool—­as possible!”

I answered nothing.  I left him to face his own remorse in silence.

At last he rose to go, and held one foot undecided on his bicycle.

“I leave myself in Heaven’s hands,” he said, as he lingered.  “It will requite. . . .  The ordeal is by water.”

“So I judged,” I answered.

“Tell Lina this from me,” he went on, still loitering:  “that if she will trust me, I will strive to do the best that remains for my darlings.  I will do it, Heaven helping.  She will know what, to-morrow.”

He mounted his machine and sailed off.  My eyes followed him up the path with sad forebodings.

All day long I loitered about the Gap.  It consisted of two bays—­ the one I had already seen, and another, divided from it by a saw-edge of rock.  In the further cove crouched a few low stone cottages.  A broad-bottomed sailing boat lay there, pulled up high on the beach.  About three o’clock, as I sat and watched, two men began to launch it.  The sea ran high; tide coming in; the sou’- wester still increasing in force to a gale; at the signal-staff on the cliff, the danger-cone was hoisted.  White spray danced in air.  Big black clouds rolled up seething from windward; low thunder rumbling; a storm threatened.

One of the men was Le Geyt, the other a fisherman.

He jumped in, and put off through the surf with an air of triumph.  He was a splendid sailor.  His boat leapt through the breakers and flew before the wind with a mere rag of canvas.  “Dangerous weather to be out!” I exclaimed to the fisherman, who stood with hands buried in his pockets, watching him.

“Ay that ur be, zur!” the man answered.  “Doan’t like the look o’ ut.  But thik there gen’leman, ‘ee’s one o’ Oxford, ’ee do tell me; and they’m a main venturesome lot, they college volk.  ’Ee’s off by ’isself droo the starm, all so var as Lundy!”