"
The words were hearty, but they excited no heartiness of response.
"We've another place to go to to-night," she said. "There'll be a
welcome for us, I reckon."
She would neither speak to him any more nor keep up with his pace upon
the road. He slackened speed, but she still shrank back, walking slower.
He found himself getting in advance, so he left her.
A hundred yards more he went on, and looked back to see her climbing the
log fence into the strip of common beside the sea.
His deliberation of mind was instantly gone. Something was wrong now. He
cast himself over the low log fence just where he was, and hastened back
along the edge of the cliff, impelled by unformulated fear.
It was dark, the dark grayness of a moonless night. The cliff here was
not more than twenty feet above the high tide, which surged and swept
deep at its base. The grass upon the top was short; young fir-trees
stood here and there. All this Caius saw. The woman he could not see at
first. Then, in a minute, he did see her--standing on the edge of the
bank, her form outlined against what light there was in sea and sky. He
saw her swing something from her. The thing she threw, whatever it was,
was whirled outwards, and then fell into the sea. With a splash, it
sank.
The young man's mind stood still with horror. The knowledge came to him
as he heard the splash that it was the little child she had flung away.
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