o court him. She yearned to put
her arms about her man's neck, but felt that somehow that way lay ruin.
Anthony being what he was, it was all-important that she should not
show him her hand. He had seen--should see a card or two, certainly.
That the rest were the same, card for card, as those he had just flung
down, in his present mood he must on no account realize. Such
knowledge were fatal. He would, presumably, kiss her, and then call
Patch and walk out of her life for ever. So long, however, as he did
not believe her lovesick, he would--well, he would not disappear, at
any rate. There are who lay hold on hopelessness rather faster than
they lay hold on life....

"Anthony, dear," said Valerie, "let's--please don't let go of my
hand--let's look for a way out. You know, I think----"

What she would have said should not matter to us. We have peered into
her brain-pan. The sentence, however, was never completed, and that
for a reason which shall pass muster.

On perceiving that Valerie and he were moving, Anthony for a moment of
time suspected an earthquake. Almost instantaneously he appreciated
that, while it affected him pretty closely, it was a much smaller
matter--nothing more, in fact, than the giving way of that portion of
the cliff upon which the two were disposed. It was typical of the man
that he neither swore nor cried out, and of the soldier that he thought
and acted simultaneously.... By the mercy of Heaven, he was, as you
know, upon one knee. Had he been sitting, like his companion, they
must have gone with the avalanche. As it was, they were able, after a
painful silence, to hear this crash evilly with a dull roar into the
pinewood.

The echoes rumbled curiously into the distance, and a startled medley
of cries rose from all manner of birds, which soared out of their
shelter, dismayed and whirling. One bird was fairly gibbering. Miss
French and Lyveden both noticed it. Valerie found herself wondering
whether it had lost its wits.

For the perfection to which their senses focussed these and other very
ordinary things, their plight was responsible. It has been said that
the faculty of observation is never so pronounced as when the observer
is face to face with Death. Anthony and the lady were looking him in
the eyes. The pair of them was, in fact, hanging in space, dangling
two hundred feet up, with an inch and a half of ash-plant between them
and Eternity.

With his right hand Lyv