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 say it has never been so good since; the river did it so much damage.'

Graham took out some coins and laid them on the table, muttering his thanks. He closed the door behind him and stood among the vineyards. The wind had dropped a little, but the rain fell still more resolutely and the evening was now as dark as the rain. Where was she? She could not have gone down the cliff to the meadow. Might she not again be at the bottom of the road watching the menaced dyke?

Suddenly he saw below him, black, tottering, half blotted out by the rain, the figure of Madame de Lamouderie. She was climbing the cliff-side, inch by inch, stopping to breathe at every three steps. He saw her against the sky, as he had first seen her; but this was a livid sky, and she was below, not above him. As he stood there, looking down upon her, she lifted the grey disk of her face and saw him, and she stopped short as if a bullet had gone through her heart.

A horrible presage traversed Graham's mind as he saw that arrest. Just so would a criminal stop, seeing suddenly before him the armed and inescapable forces of the law. No fear that he had ever known equalled the fear he felt as he recognized in that instant the embodied evil before him.

He walked slowly down the path until he had come close to her, and as he thus advanced upon her he did not move his eyes from her fixed and staring face. Then, standing still before her,' he said: 'Where is Marthe?'