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“And you will come back, Jim? Promise! Promise!”

“Of course, darling–of course! There! Don’t cry! Can’t you see it’s a chance in a thousand? I’ve never had such a chance before.”

The sound of a woman’s low sobbing was audible in the silence that followed; and a man who was leaning on the sea-wall above, started and peered downwards.

He could dimly discern two figures standing in the shadow of a great breakwater below him. More than that he could not distinguish, for it was a dark night; but he knew that the man’s arms were about the girl, and that her face was hidden against him.

Realising himself to be an intruder, he stood up and began to walk away.

He had not gone a dozen yards before the sound of flying feet caught his attention, and he turned his head. A woman’s light figure was running behind him along the deserted parade. He waited for her under a gas-lamp.

She overtook him and fled past him without a pause. He caught a glimpse of a pale face and fair hair in wild disorder.

Then she was gone again into the night, running swiftly. The darkness closed about her, and hid her from view.

The man on the parade paused for several seconds, then walked back to his original resting-place by the sea-wall.

The band on the pier was playing a jaunty selection from a comic opera. It came in gusts of gaiety. The wash of the sea, as it crept up the beach, was very mysterious and remote.

Below, on the piled shingle, a man stood alone, staring out over the darkness, motionless and absorbed.

The watcher above him struck a match at length and kindled a cigarette. His face was lit up during the operation. It was the face of a man who had seen a good deal of the world and had not found the experience particularly refreshing. Yet, as he looked down upon the silent figure below him, there was more of compassion than cynicism in his eyes. There was a glint of humour also, like the shrewd half-melancholy humour of a monkey that possesses the wisdom of all the ages, and can impart none of it.

Suddenly there was a movement on the shingle. The lonely figure had turned and flung itself face downwards among the tumbling stones. The abandonment of the action was very young, and perhaps it was that very fact that made it so indescribably pathetic. To Lester Cheveril, leaning on the sea-wall, it appealed as strongly as the crying of a child. He glanced over his shoulder. The place was deserted. Then he deliberately dropped his cigarette-case over the wall and exclaimed: “Confound it!”

The prone figure on the shingle rolled over and sat up.

“Hullo!” said Cheveril.

There was a distinct pause before a voice replied: “Hullo! What’s the matter?”

“I’ve dropped my cigarette-case,” said Cheveril. “Beastly careless of me!”

Again there was a pause. Then the man below him stumbled to his feet.

“I’ve got a match,” he said. “I’ll see if I can find it.”

“Don’t trouble,” said Cheveril politely. “The steps are close by.”

He walked away at an easy pace and descended to the beach. The flicker of a match guided him to the searcher. As he drew near, the light went out, and the young man turned to meet him.

“Here it is,” he said gruffly.

“Many thanks!” said Cheveril. “It’s so confoundedly dark to-night. I scarcely expected to see it again.”

The other muttered an acknowledgment, and stood prepared to depart.

Cheveril, however, paused in a conversational attitude. He had not risked his property for nothing.

“A pretty little place, this,” he said. “I suppose you are a visitor here like myself?”

“I’m leaving to-morrow,” was the somewhat grudging rejoinder.

“I only came this afternoon,” said Cheveril. “Is there anything to see here?”

“There’s the sea and the lighthouse,” his companion told him curtly–“nothing else.”

Cheveril smiled faintly to himself in the darkness.