ly.

"Anybody else?"

"My husband."

"I mean any other people? Are there any other houses?" he said with a
slight impatience.

"No."

He looked at her and then towards the sea. "I expect some friends who
are coming for me in a boat. I suppose they can land easily here?"

"Didn't you yourself land here just now?" she said quickly.

He half hesitated, and then, as if scorning an equivocation, made a
hasty gesture over her shoulder and said bluntly, "No, I came over the
cliff."

"Down the cliff?" she repeated incredulously.

"Yes," he said, glancing at his clothes; "it was a rough scramble, but
the goats showed me the way."

"And you were up on the bluff all the time?" she went on curiously.

"Yes. You see--I"--he stopped suddenly at what seemed to be the
beginning of a prearranged and plausible explanation, as if impatient of
its weakness or hypocrisy, and said briefly, "Yes, I was there."

Like most women, more observant of his face and figure, she did not miss
this lack of explanation. He was a very good-looking man of middle age,
with a thin, proud, high-bred face, which in a country of bearded men
had the further distinction of being smoothly shaven. She had never seen
any one like him before. She thought he looked like an illustration of
some novel she had read, but also somewhat melancholy, worn, and tired.

"Won't you come in and rest yourself?" she said, motioning to the cabin.

"Thank you," he said, still half absently. "Perhaps I'd better. It may
be some time yet before they come."

She led the way to the cabin, entered the living room--a plainly
furnished little apartment between the bedroom and the kitchen--pointed
to a large bamboo armchair, and placed a bottle of whiskey and some
water on the table before him. He thanked her again very gently, poured
out some spirits in his glass, and mixed it with water. But when she
glanced towards him again he had apparently risen without tasting it,
and going to the door was standing there with his hand in the breast
of his buttoned frock coat, gazing silently towards the sea. There was
something vaguely historical in his attitude--or what she thought might
be historical--as of somebody of great importance who had halted on the
eve of some great event at the door of her humble cabin.

His apparent unconsciousness of her and of his surroundings, his
preoccupation with something far beyond her ken, far from piquing her,
only excited her interest the mor