Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/262

 "You will go—you must go to-night, at once—before father comes."

"I will go at once," he said.

"Good-bye," she whispered—and held out her hand. For a moment he held it in his own; then he bent his head and touched it with his lips.

"God guard and keep you and bring you happiness," he said, "through all your life."

He watched her go—watched long after the last flutter of her cloak was lost to view around a little headland of projecting rock far down the beach.

The last rays of the setting sun flung themselves athwart the heaving waters, making emerald valleys of wondrous hue betwixt the waves, tingeing the white, foaming, pearly crests with a crimson radiance. Then the light was gone, and it grew dark—chill, it seemed, and the boom of the surf was as a sullen dirge.

Slowly then Varge walked to the foot of the pathway leading to the cliff above, and slowly began to mount it.

He would go first to the coast-guard station and say good-bye—it would not do to risk suspicion by a sudden and unaccountable disappearance. The warden could not possibly have recognised him from the cliff—had not even seen, in all probability, that there was any one on the beach, for they had been almost entirely concealed from above behind the rock where they had been standing. Nor was the warden's presence on the cliff alarming—finding Janet out on his arrival, it was natural enough that he should stroll along the cliffs and watch the storm.

Almost at the top of the cliff the path swerved sharply to the left. Varge made the turn—and stopped dead