‘If I surmount these terrific perils, if I reach Petersport safely, your flowers will share my fate. Don’t be anxious about them, Miss Bartrand.’ Marjorie paused, her face set and thoughtful. After a minute or two, with the unconsciousness of self, the ignorance of possible misconstruction which rendered her actions so absolutely the actions of a child, she unloosened her waist ribbon. A length of twine lay in her basket. With this she bound the flower stalks firmly together, then knotting her ribbon, she attached it in a long loop to the bouquet. ‘Before setting foot on the cliff’s you must pass the loop round your neck--so.’ For Geffs better guidance she pantomimed her instructions round her own girlish throat. ‘By that contrivance you leave your hands free. And you must take care of my ribbon, if you please, sir, and bring it back next lesson. It is a bit of real Spanish peasant ribbon one of my cousins bought for me in Cadiz. A thing not to be replaced in these parts of the world. Good-night, Mr. Arbuthnot.’ ‘You have not said half enough. You have not even told me whom your flowers are for.’ ‘My flowers are for a person I hope, before long, to know and like well.’ ‘The description is tantalising. It would scarcely furnish me, I fear, with the one name and address of the person wanted, among all the narrow, twisting streets of Petersport.’ ‘The flowers are, Mr. Arbuthnot, cannot you guess--for whom they are meant?’ ‘I am ill at originating ideas, Miss Bartrand. I can guess nothing.’ ‘Because you cannot, or will not, which?’ ‘Because I cannot, because I am blankly unimaginative.’ For a few moments Marjorie stood masterfully inactive. Then she flew discreetly back into the shadow of the lane. On a slightly rising mound she stopped. What light there was touched the upper half of her face, and Geoffrey could see her eyes. He knew that her mood, for Marjorie Bartrand, was a softened one. ‘The flowers are for yourself, Mr. Arbuthnot,’ so her voice rang through the sea-scented night. ‘For your better self, you understand. Don’t lose my ribbon, and, if you can help it, don’t fall over the Gros Nez cliffs. Good-night.’ And with a wave of her hand--though he was blankly unimaginative, Geoffrey believed it might be with a wafted kiss from her finger tips--she disappeared. Geff Arbuthnot’s first experience in snubbing had come to an end. Pondering over many things, most of all over the cruelties and caprices of youthful woman, he ran lightly down the ankle-deep water-lane, then across a miniature bay of argent, shell-strewn sands, to the base of Gros Nez cliffs. The ridge rose sheer above his head, a dark wall of over a hundred and fifty feet, polished as glass to the limit of the breakers, but, above that line, fissured, lichened, rough.