“I’d a’ given my right arm to have saved her from this,” Charles heard him mutter.

Charles found himself looking down at Thalassa’s brown muscular arm, corded with veins, stretched out on the rock by which he stood.  It was as though it had been bared for his inspection, which was not, indeed, the case.  If that arm could save Sisily, it was at her service.  But what was the good of that?  What was the good of his own efforts to help her?  Charles had a suffocating feeling of the futility of human effort when opposed by the malignity of Fate.  He asked himself with aching heart what was to be the outcome of it all?  He had failed.  What then?  It was not until that moment that he realized how strongly he had been buoyed up by the false optimism of hope.  His consciousness, as though directed by the power of a devil, was forced to look for the first time upon the hideous inevitability of the appointed end.

“No, no!  Not that—­not that,” he shudderingly whispered to himself.

Neither moved.  The minutes passed leaden-footed.  It was silent and still in that wild spot, as if theirs were the only two human hearts beating in a dead world.  It seemed as though neither could bring it upon himself to terminate the interview.  Charles was the first to break the silence.  He spoke like a man coming out of a dream.

“Did that clock upstairs keep good time?” he asked in a low voice.

Thalassa turned on him as if not understanding the purport of the question.

“It was going shipshape and Bristol fashion in the afternoon.  What’s that got to do with it?  What does it signify if it was five minutes fast or slow?”

The logic of the answer was apparent to Charles, who knew he was only attempting to pluck something by chance out of the dark maze.  But another and shrewder idea started up in his mind.

“What was your reason for hurrying back across the moors that night?”

“Miss Sisily told me to go.”

“But you had another reason—­a reason of your own,” said Charles, turning quickly to regard him.  “You said so yourself.”

“If I had I’ve forgotten what it was,” said Thalassa with a black look.

“You cannot have forgotten!” cried Charles.  “What was it?” Hope sprang up in his heart again like a warm flame as he detected something confused and irresolute in the other’s attitude.  “Thalassa, you are keeping something back.  You know, or you guess, who the murderer is!”

“I’m keeping nothing back.”

“You are.  I can see it in your face.  What is it that you will not tell?  What do you fear?”

“The gallows—­for one thing.”

“You’d sooner see Sisily lose her life on them?”

This bitter taunt, wrung from the depth of the young man’s anguished heart, had an instantaneous and unexpected effect on his companion.

“No, no!” he hoarsely cried, “I couldn’t a’ bear that.  But it’s nothing to tell, nothing to help.  It was earlier that night, before she came.  I was looking out of the kitchen window, when I thought I saw a rock move.  Then I looked again, and it seemed like a man—­though I couldn’t see his face.”