VI

They walked out of the shadows and up a long sloping path until Sandgate, as a little line of lights, came into view below. Presently they came out upon the brow and walked together (the band playing with a remote and sweetening indistinctness far away behind them) towards the cliff at the end. They stood for a little while in silence looking down. Melville made a guess at his companion's thoughts.

"Why not come down to–night?" he asked.

"On a night like this!" Chatteris turned about suddenly and regarded the moonlight and the sea. He stood quite still for a space, and that cold white radiance gave an illusory strength and decision to his face. "No," he said at last, and the word was almost a sigh.

"Go down to the girl below there. End the thing. She will be there, thinking of you―"

"No," said Chatteris, "no."

"It's not ten yet," Melville tried again.

Chatteris thought. "No," he answered, "not to–night. To–morrow, in the light of everyday.

"I want a good, gray, honest day," he said, "with a south–west wind…. These still, soft nights! How can you expect me to do anything of that sort to–night?"

And then he murmured as if he found the word a satisfying word to repeat, "Renunciation."

"By Jove!" he said with the most astonishing transition, "but this is a night out of fairyland! Look at the lights of those windows below there and then up—up into this enormous blue of sky. And there, as if it were fainting with moonlight—shines one star."