lummetted ocean below and afar--rubbing its restless flank against
the Cliff without a Name.

Knight perseveringly held fast. Had he any faith in Elfride? Perhaps.
Love is faith, and faith, like a gathered flower, will rootlessly live
on.

Nobody would have expected the sun to shine on such an evening as this.
Yet it appeared, low down upon the sea. Not with its natural golden
fringe, sweeping the furthest ends of the landscape, not with the
strange glare of whiteness which it sometimes puts on as an alternative
to colour, but as a splotch of vermilion red upon a leaden ground--a red
face looking on with a drunken leer.

Most men who have brains know it, and few are so foolish as to disguise
this fact from themselves or others, even though an ostentatious display
may be called self-conceit. Knight, without showing it much, knew that
his intellect was above the average. And he thought--he could not help
thinking--that his death would be a deliberate loss to earth of good
material; that such an experiment in killing might have been practised
upon some less developed life.

A fancy some people hold, when in a bitter mood, is that inexorable
circumstance only tries to prevent what intelligence attempts. Renounce
a desire for a long-contested position, and go on another tack, and
after a while the prize is thrown at you, seemingly in disappointment
that no more tantalizing is possible.

Knight gave up thoughts of life utterly and entirely, and turned to
contemplate the Dark Valley and the unknown future beyond. Into the
shadowy depths of these speculations we will not follow him. Let it
suffice to state what ensued.

At that moment of taking no more thought for this life, something
disturbed the outline of the bank above him. A spot appeared. It was the
head of Elfride.

Knight immediately prepared to welcome life again.

The expression of a face consigned to utter loneliness, when a friend
first looks in upon it, is moving in the extreme. In rowing seaward to
a light-ship or sea-girt lighthouse, where, without any immediate terror
of death, the inmates experience the gloom of monotonous seclusion, the
grateful eloquence of their countenances at the greeting, expressive of
thankfulness for the visit, is enough to stir the emotions of the most
careless observer.

Knight's upward look at Elfride was of a nature with, but far
transcending, such an instance as this. The lines of his face had
deepened to furrows, and