Down in the harbour his yacht was waiting, and he wondered cynically what whim kept him from joining her. Why was he staying to drain the cup to the dregs--he who had the whole world to choose from? He had sent his message, he had made his sacrifice--at what a cost not even Maud would ever know. It was the first voluntary sacrifice he had ever made, he reflected ironically, and he marvelled at himself to find that he cared so much. For, after all, what was it he had sacrificed? Nothing worth having, so he told himself. He had possessed her childish adoration, but her love--never! And, very curiously, it was her love that he had wanted. Actually, for the first time in his life, no lesser thing had appealed to him. Jaded and weary with long experience, he owned now to a longing for that at which all his life long he had scoffed. The longing was not to be satisfied. He was to go empty away. But yet the very fact that he had known it had in some inexplicable fashion purified him from earthly desires. He had as it were reached up and touched the spiritual, and that which was not spiritual had crumbled away below him. He looked back upon the desert through which all his life he had travelled, and saw only sand. The sound of the turret-door banging behind him recalled him to his surroundings. He awoke to the fact that the wind was chill, and that a drift of rain was coming in from the sea. With an impatient shrug he turned. Why was he lingering here like a drunken reveller at a table of spilt wine? He would go down to his yacht and find Larpent--Larpent who had also loved and lost. They would go out on the turn of the tide--the two losers in the game of life--and leave the spilt wine behind them. Impulsively he strode back along the ramparts. The game was over, and he would never play again; but at least he would face the issue like a man. No one, not even Larpent, should ever see him flinch. So he reached the turret-door, and came abruptly to a halt. It was no vision that showed her to him, standing there in her slender fairness, wrapt in a cloak that glimmered vaguely blue in the glimmering starlight. Her face was very pale, and he saw her frightened eyes as she stood before him. Her hands were tightly clasped together, and she spoke no word at all. The door was shut behind her, and he saw that she was trembling from head to foot. He stood motionless, within reach of her, but not touching her. "Well?" he said. She made a curious gesture with her clasped hands, standing before him as she had stood on board his yacht on that night in the Mediterranean when she had come to him for refuge. "I've come," she said, in a voice that quivered uncontrollably, "to tell you something." Saltash did not stir. His face was in shadow, but there was a suggestion of tension about his attitude that was not reassuring. "Well?" he said again.