She had none of the nervous panic that had assailed her the night before. She was conscious of nothing but a black despair--a despair such as Denis Asshlin had been wont to drown in drink and cards. She had lived her life; she had had her chance; and the end was failure. She had tangled the thread of her existence; and the one hand that could have unravelled the tangle was closed against her. One thought alone she rigorously refused to harbour--the thought of Nance. Nance would have her husband--Nance would have her home, she assured herself. Nance would forget. In vain the remembrance of her faithful loyalty rose to make the assurance doubtful. As she had closed the door upon Mick, so she closed her heart to the knowledge. There were certain hours in every life, she told herself, when the soul judged the body--judged and forgave, or judged and condemned! Her shaken mind drove her feet faster along the rugged track--faster--faster, as though Nemesis pursued her. Terrible visions rose from the sea, creeping over the cliff's edge--visions of Larry, stiff and dead, as she had seen her father, as she had seen Milbanke--visions of the cottage at Carrigmore, of her aunt's dark room, filled with the sound of lamentation. Before she was aware of it, she turned a bend in the path, and came full upon the scene of her father's accident. She paused, gave a faint gasp, and involuntarily put her hand to her throat. Her destination was nearer than she had thought. In a vague, startled way her eyes scanned the place, roving from the chasm in the cliff to the sweep of short grass, with its tufting of hardy flowers that throve in the strong, salt air. It was also still--so extraordinarily still! Fifty yards away a goat browsed on the cliff, and the quiet, cropping sound of its eating came to her distinctly; overhead in the pale blue sky a hawk was poised, seemingly motionless; down below her, three hundred feet away, the sea made a curious sucking noise, as it filled and receded from some invisible fissure in the rocks. Still with her hand to her throat, she tip-toed forward to the edge of the chasm. Then suddenly she drew back, trembling and giddy. Beneath her, at what looked an incredible distance, the clear green waters formed a narrow estuary, shadowed by the towering rocks. They were like a grave, those waters--so secret, so full of mystery! Again she forced herself to look, compelling her unwilling eyes to travel up and down the great sweep of red sandstone, from the grass at the edge of the abyss to the dark water, from the water back again to the grass. She could not be a coward in this last moment! She had never been a physical coward! She stepped back; she took one dazed look at the world that, until yesterday, had been so very fair; she drew one long, tense, shuddering breath, closed her eyes, and went forward.