"There'll be a welcome for us, I reckon." She would neither speak to him any more nor keep up with his pace upon the road.

He slackened speed, but she still shrank back, walking slower.
He found himself getting in advance, so he left her.
A hundred yards more he went on, and looked back to see her climbing the log fence into the strip of common beside the sea.
His deliberation of mind was instantly gone.

Something was wrong now.

He cast himself over the low log fence just where he was, and hastened back along the edge of the cliff, impelled by unformulated fear.
It was dark, the dark grayness of a moonless night.

The cliff here was not more than twenty feet above the high tide, which surged and swept deep at its base.