ching for me in
Cornwall as well as here. If I fail--if I do not come back ... you will
understand?"

Her look answered him.

"You had better watch the papers. And be careful on your own account." He
eyed her anxiously. "Do you think you will be safe here till I get back?"

"Yes--I think so," she murmured sadly.

"Very well. I will go down by to-night's train--I've just time to catch
it." He glanced at his watch with an assumption of cheerfulness. "When you
wake up in the morning I shall be in Cornwall."

"I shall not sleep," she said, in a miserable broken voice. "I shall lie
awake, thinking of you."

He caught her swiftly in his arms, and kissed her on the lips. "If I find
out the truth, nothing shall come between us then, Sisily?"

"No, nothing," she said.

He turned with a sudden swift movement as though to go, but she still held
him.

"Tell Thalassa ... that I ask him to tell you the truth, if he knows
it...."

She released him then, and stood looking after him as he walked from the
room and out of the house.

CHAPTER XXVII

Flint House looked a picture of desolation in the chill grey day, wrapped
in such silence that Charles's cautious knock seemed to reverberate
through the stillness around. But the knocking, repeated more loudly,
aroused no human response. After waiting awhile the young man pulled the
bell. From within the house a cracked and jangling tinkle echoed faintly,
and then quivered into silence. He rang again, but there was no sound of
foot or voice; no noise but the cries of the gulls overhead and the hoarse
beat of the sea at the foot of the cliffs.

A cormorant, sitting on a rock near by, twisted its thin neck to stare
fearlessly at the visitor. But Charles Turold was not thinking of
cormorants. Where was Thalassa? Where was his wife? He believed they were
still in Cornwall, but they might have left the house. He had been in
London a long while. Not so long, though--only twelve days. Twelve days!
Twelve eternities of unendurable hopelessness and loneliness, such as the
damned might know. Was he to fail, now, after finding Sisily? He had a
responsibility, a solemn duty. He had reached Cornwall safely from
London--run the gauntlet of all the watching eyes of the police--and he
would not go back without seeing Thalassa. His mind was thoroughly made
up. He would find him, if he had to walk every inch of Cornwall in search
of him. And when he found him he would wrest the truth