His voice came harsh and inarticulate. She turned, startled at the strange sound, though not catching the name, and her face paled. Who could this intruder be? She was alone with him and at his mercy, and he looked so wild and queer. She was very frightened, and for a moment all manner of horrid conjecture flashed through her brain. She felt sickly and faint. An escaped lunatic, was one of her first thoughts, having dismissed the tramp theory--and she noticed that he was tall and strong of build, and well-dressed, withal. And he was approaching her. "Have you lost your way?" she began gently, striving hard to repress the apprehensive tremor in her voice. "Olive! Don't _you_ know me?" With a low cry she sank down on the rock, and sat gazing wildly at him with a white, scared face. "It is _his_ voice--Roland!" The spell was broken. He was beside her, and his arms were round her while he poured into her ears passionate words of tender reassurance. And it would be difficult to determine which of the two was most startled by the unexpected meeting. "My love--my love! Why did you leave me all this long time?" she murmured at last. Not an intonation of reproach towards himself on her account, only on his own, as if she had said, "Why did you leave me--your haven of refuge when the storm came upon you? Why did you leave me, who would have cleaved to you in adversity--who would have clung to you through evil report a hundred times closer than through good?" "Yes--why did I?" He had removed his glasses, and stood before her his old self--but such a shadow of it! She was horrified. "What have you been doing with yourself?" she said. "Have you been trying to die?" Then he laughed--a harsh, bitter laugh. It rang back from the cliffs in weird, mocking echo. "Oh, no. The Fates are not so kind. Why did I leave you, you say? Everything was against us. Your father would not listen to me, even when I had my head above water--how could I expect him to when it was below, with no prospect of ever rising to the surface again? You, yourself, would never have acted contrary to his wishes, even if I had been in a position to urge you to--and for this I should be the last to blame you, understand that, well. But for me, an utterly ruined man, to hold you bound to me for life, was just the one thing I could not do." "Go on." "Well, we never saw each other again after that informal parting in Wandsborough street," he went on. "I hoped--I mean I tried to hope--you would forget me and be happy again. After all, why should you not? Only three or four short months--a summer dream." His voice was harsh and grating. At times it seemed that he would choke. "A summer dream! My whole life was lived within that summer dream," she whispered, more to herself than to him. "Roland, you will not leave me again!"