And she sat there in the deep quiet of a woman intent upon her hour. He had no ear for the call of her silence, for the voice of the instincts prisoned in blood and brain. Presently she rose, shrugging her shoulders and gathering her furs about her. "I want to walk," she said; "will you come?" She led the way to the corner where the low wall was joined by a high one, dividing the hotel garden from the open down. There was a gate here; it led to a flight of wooden steps that went zig-zag to the beach below. At the first turn in the flight a narrow path was cut on the Cliff side. To the right it rose inland, following the slope of the down. To the left it ran level under the low wall, then climbed higher yet to the brow of the headland. There it ended in a square recess, a small white chamber cut from the chalk and open to the sea and sky. From the floor of the recess the Cliff dropped sheer to the beach two hundred feet below. Mrs. Tailleur took the path to the left. Lucy followed her. The path was stopped by the bend of the great Cliff, the recess roofed by its bulging forehead. There was a wooden seat set well back under this cover. Two persons who found themselves alone there might count on security from interruption. Mrs. Tailleur and Lucy were alone. Lucy looked at the Cliff wall in front of them. "We must go back," said he. "Oh no," said she; "don't let's go back." "But if you want to walk----" "I don't," said she; "do you?" He didn't, and they seated themselves. In the charm of this intimate seclusion Lucy became more than ever dumb. Mrs. Tailleur waited a few minutes in apparent meditation. All Lucy said was "May I smoke?" "You may." She meditated again. "I was wondering," said she, "whether you were ever going to say anything." "I didn't know," said Lucy simply, "whether I might. I thought you were thinking." "So I was. I was thinking of what you were going to say next. I never met anybody who said less and took so long a time to say it in." "Well," said Lucy, "I was thinking too." "I know you were. You needn't be so afraid of me unless you like." "I am not," said he stiffly, "in the least afraid of you. I'm desperately afraid of saying the wrong thing." "To me? Or everybody?" "Not everybody." "To me, then. Do you think I might be difficult?" "Difficult?" "To get on with?" "Not in the least. Possibly, if I may say so, a little difficult to know." She smiled. "I don't usually strike people in that light." "Well, I think I'm afraid of boring you." "You couldn't if you tried from now to midnight." "How do you know what I mightn't do?" "That's it. I don't know. I never _should_ know. It's only the people I'm sure of that bore me. Don't they you?" He laughed uneasily.