"Never--never!" he had to assure her. If he talked of the sunshine she would laugh and ask if it did not make her hair look red. Her hands, her feet, her fingers--she was never weary of having them praised. And yet she lacked the joy of losing herself in love; she had a merciless power of analysing emotion, because she did not feel it deeply herself. In all his transports, Bertie knew there had been something missing; he had been the lover, she content to be loved. The true companionship which can keep silence was never theirs. Now, with the sea of grass waving behind them, and the sea crooning, crooning, so far below, the man was afraid. Was there a second sort of love, and had he missed the best thing in life? He loved the clean airs of the country, sport of all kinds, a home to go to. Yet he must spend his days in close streets, in an eternal rush of entertainment and entertaining; to go home to a little portion of a great building, where he was merely one of the tenants of a flat. If no one was coming, the little drawing-room was left bare of flowers, neglected. Esmé said she could not afford them every day. If he came home to tea, an injured maid brought him a cup of cold stuff, probably warmed from the morning's teapot, with two slices of bread and butter on a plate. This woman, sleeping so quietly, her long dark lashes lying on a sun-kissed cheek, would create a home, live in the quiet country, find companionship without eternal rushing about to her fellow-mortals; enjoy her month or two away, and then enjoy doubly the coming to her own home. Man, with his pipe in his mouth and sitting in silence, dreams foolishly as some growing girl. In Bertie's dream he saw Cliff End inhabited; he went round his farms, came back to the gardens to walk in them with a slender figure by his side, with a hundred things to think of, a hundred things to do. The simpler things which weld home life together. He saw toddling mites running to meet him, crying to their dada; a boy who must learn to swim and shoot and ride; a bonnie girl who would learn too, but less strenuously. He saw cold winter shut out, and two people who sat before a great fire, contented to sit still and talk or read. So thinking, the dream passed from waking; his eyes closed, and he, too, fell asleep. A man strolling along the cliffs paused suddenly, whistled and paused, looking down at the two. A sly-eyed, freckled youth, who whistled again, drew back, clicked the shutter of the camera he carried, and went on, laughing. "A pretty picture," he said contemptuously. Bertie awoke with the faint whistle in his ears--woke to find Estelle's ruffled head close against his own. He sat up, wondering how long he had been asleep. The freckled stranger was visible just dipping down to the steep path which led to the sea. "I hope he did not see us. Good Lord! I hope he did not see us!" Estelle woke too, coming from sleep as a child does, rose-flushed, blinking, rubbing her eyes.