scape with becoming seriousness, he amused himself by
trying to feel as he would have felt if he had actually gone over the
cliff. He found that his keenest emotion was a thrill of horror, as he
imagined Miss Harden a possible spectator of the ridiculous evolutions
performed by his person in its passage through the air.

After an hour of dipping and climbing he reached a small fishing
village. Here he dined and rested, and it was mid-afternoon before he
turned again towards Harmouth. There was no chance of missing his way;
he had nothing to do but follow the coast-line as he had done before.

There were signs in the valley of the white fog that sometimes, even
in April, comes in before sunset; already a veil of liquid air was
drawn across the hills, and when he crossed Easton Down (if it was
Easton Down) again the sea's face was blurred with mist.

As he went on westwards the mist kept pace with him, gradually
diminishing the view he had hoped to see. And as it shifted and closed
round him, his movements became labyrinthine, then circular.

And now his view was all foreground; he was simply walking through
circles of moor, enclosed by walls of fine grey fog. He passed through
these walls, like a spirit, into smaller and smaller circles; then,
hopelessly bewildered, he stopped, turned, and walked in what he took
to be a contrary direction, feeling that the chance of going over the
cliff-side lent an agreeable excitement to a pastime that threatened
to become monotonous. This was assuming the cliff-side to be somewhere
near; and he was beginning to feel that it might be anywhere, under
his feet for all he knew, when the fog lifted a little from the high
ground, and he saw that he had lost his bearings altogether. He had
been going round and round through these circles without returning to
the point he started from. He went forward less cautiously in a larger
round, and then he suddenly stood still. He was not alone.

His foreground had widened slightly and a figure stood in the middle
of it. There was something familiar in the blurred outlines, traced as
if by a watery finger on the wall of mist. An idea had taken shape
stealthily behind him and flung its shadow there. The idea was Lucia
Harden. The fog hung in her hair in drops like rain; it made her grey
dress cling close about her straight, fine limbs; it gave its own
grandeur and indistinctness to her solitary figure.

She turned, unstartled, but with an air of i