hts twinkling along the shore.

Caroline was crying for the sorrow she had given Wilf, but that only
lay on the surface, though genuine enough. Beneath that, all
unknowing, she mourned a loss which nothing could restore. She and
Wilf had given each other that first bloom of young attraction--bright
glances, touches, cool kisses almost without passion--and no power
could bring that back. They felt miserable, standing there with the
little waves coming in--whish! whish!--upon the gravelly patch of sand:
for there lay at the bottom of their hearts a sense of something
irretrievably wasted, which they could never have in life any more.

"Well." He spoke first, bitterly. "I hope you may get your rich chap.
As you've no more need for me, I may as well go."

"I'm not throwing you over for that, Wilf," said Caroline in a low
voice.

His subdued mood spurted up with a sudden irritability of jarred nerves
again. "Then what are you for? That's what I should like to know."

"I--I----" She sought to give him a true answer. "You're not old
enough. I want a man, now I'm older. You won't be twenty-one for two
years."

"A man!" He swung round towards her, peering with fury through the
twilight into her face. "A man! What d'you call me? What do you take
me for? A man!" He paused, choking for breath, then shouted out: "Go
and find your man, then. I don't want you, I don't want you. I
wouldn't have you at a gift. A man! Not if you went down on your
hands and knees----" He was walking away as he spoke, shouting over
his shoulder, almost incoherent with the rage engendered by that sudden
stab in his tenderest spot. Just before he was beyond ear-shot, he
paused a second and called out: "There'll be no going back. You
needn't think it. I shall pay the first instalment of a new bike in
the morning."

So the dusk swallowed up his slim figure, and she was left by herself
on the cliff. After a while a couple came along closely entwined and
when they were close on her the girl said with a start: "Carrie? Is
that you all by yourself? Where's Wilf?"

"Oh, he is a bit further on," said Caroline, striving to make her voice
sound casual. "Don't you stop for me."

"All right! So long as you haven't pushed him over the cliff, Carrie,"
said the girl, laughing: then she and her young man went their way,
forgetting all about other people.

Caroline waited until they had gone some little distance before she
followed