It was a fitful night; one on which the clouds travelled swiftly. One moment the brightness of a silvering moon; the next comparative darkness. When the extinguishers hid the lamp of night, the illumination of the heavens was left to the stars.

There was sufficient light for Masters to find his way over the breakwaters without stumbling. At times, though, despite the brightness of the moon, his eyes saw dimly. With a swiftness bred of anger he knuckled the dimness away, cursing his own irrepressible folly the while.

His heart—soul—was full to bursting point. If he could only laugh, he thought; only laugh at himself! What an immense, great big thing it would be!

Walking, smart walking, was the only relief he experienced; physical exertion was reputedly an antidote to mental excitement. He felt sufficient energy to have moved on indefinitely. Wished he could walk on till he fell from exhaustion. In that there would have been satisfaction; rest, at any rate. Rest from that tumultuous tide of recrimination surging in his brain.

His anger was directed against himself; no one else. It upsprung from the fact that he had been such a fool, such an utter, absolute fool, as to be gulled by a woman! Scoffingly he told himself that anger against her would be unfair; that her behaviour had been merely typical of her sex!

He, who had ever with his pen written against womankind—until at last reviewers had spoken of his work as being that of a woman-hater—to have fallen such an easy victim to the first siren who spread her snare for him! The thought was fuel to the maddening fever in possession of him.

Then came before him her face; those sweet, eloquent, soulful eyes! Well, he endeavoured to comfort himself with the thought that any man would have fallen a victim as he had done. The amount of comfort in it, though, would have found resting-place on a needle's point.

There was an underlying reason for the failure. Granted that his ideal was shattered, he still loved its ruins. Therein lay the hopelessness of it all—and he knew it. Striding on, he savagely kicked out of his way, now and then, a stone. Poor sort of relief again.

The configuration of the coast line brought him to an abrupt standstill. The cliff, jutting out, was met by a barrier of high rocks. These latter were overgrown with seaweed of the slipperiest sort: defiance bidding. Nature's sudden intervention in his proceedings produced a corresponding interruption in his thoughts.

Why should he think about this woman any longer? She was not worth wasting thought over. He had been happy enough without her—before he knew her. So he would be happy without her still.

Cut the thought of her clean out of his mind; out of his heart. That, he told himself, was the correct thing to do. Life should be for him as if he had never seen her, never looked into the unfathomable depths of those forget-me-not eyes. It would be quite easy; a little effort of will was needed—that was all.

All that he meant; every word of it. Framed a resolution that he looked on as adamantine. But he ignored an important factor; made no allowance for the strange vitality of that prolific pure white flower: Love.

The axe of common sense may be laid to the root of the tree; may cut it down root and branch. Still one small remaining tendril, hidden from the sight, will work its way into the heart; spread and grow until in its magnitude it overshadows every other thought. Such is love.

Masters reached the steps which led up from the sands to the seat. Standing at their base, he looked away in the direction of the sea. It was easy to mark the spot where Gracie had worked so hard with spade and pail.

He thought of the child with a pang of pity. For his heart had gone out to her; he had been captivated by her loving, winsome ways. Even now his eyes rested on where Gracie had built her last castle. He could mentally see her gleesomely watching the waters overflowing the moat and gradually sweeping down the castle's inverted pail-shaped turrets.

Gracie! Poor little soul! And so she, whom he had mistaken for the governess—this woman—was the mother of that incarnation of innocence and purity! What of the child's future? He shuddered to think of it; it was horrible; all horrible in the extreme.

Well, he would go home to his lodgings. First he would look again—for the last time—on that portion of the sands. For he felt that he would never be able to come there again. He would have been thankful for a breeze just then: his brow was feeling so fevered.

Perhaps there was more air on the seawall; he would test it, pass up the steps. There was the seat to avoid looking at; the seat whereon they had both sat reading—heart reading heart. Where had been born to him the happiest moment in life: love's awakening.

There was other history about the seat too: pencil created. Thereon, before that meeting, had been born heroes and heroines, wicked men and wicked women. All to be bound together and pressed between covers later on, to gladden or sadden readers' hearts.

Living a romance is less alluring than writing one: Masters found it so. He had been wont to believe in the parts he cast his characters for. He was learning!

Stumbling up the steps on to the wall, he started to walk home. But he halted, suddenly, before he had taken half-a-dozen paces. No drill sergeant's command ever brought up an absent-minded beggar on parade as did the words which fell on his ear.

"I thought that was you, Mr. Masters!"

Her voice! The voice of his shattered idol! The same voice: just as fresh and soft and kind as ever! Her voice, speaking to him! Could it be? Or was it a dream simply, a chimera of his brain? Or was this voice—this voice ringing, singing in his ears now—the result of his highly fevered imagination only?

He feared to turn his head to see. To know whether it was in reality the woman for whom he had been ready to lay down his life—whom he had considered a princess among women; chaste, pure, modest; whose dethronation had been so recent. Whom he had come to think of as soiled.

Yes! She was there before him in the flesh! This perfidious parody of perfection, this transmuted ideal. He waited for a moment motionless; then raised his cap—a merely mechanical act.

Besides, being a woman, whatever else she might be, she was exempt from rudeness at his hands.

Her sex protected her.