They turned aside from the high path of the Leas to the head of some steps that led down the declivity. In a few moments it was as if those imposing fronts of stucco, those many-windowed hotels, the electric lights on the tall masts, the band-stand and miscellaneous holiday British public, had never existed. It is one of Folkestone's best effects, that black quietness under the very feet of a crowd. They no longer heard the band even, only a remote suggestion of music filtered to them over the brow. The black-treed slopes fell from them to the surf below, and out at sea were the lights of many ships. Away to the westward like a swarm of fire-flies hung the lights of Hythe. The two men sat down on a vacant seat in the dimness. For a time neither spoke. Chatteris impressed Melville with an air of being on the defensive. He murmured in a meditative undertone, "I wouldn't 'ave no truck with 'im not after that." "I will admit by every standard," he said aloud, "that I have been flappy and feeble and wrong. Very. In these things there is a prescribed and definite course. To hesitate, to have two points of view, is condemned by all right-thinking people.... Still--one has the two points of view.... You have come up from Sandgate?" "Yes." "Did you see Miss Glendower?" "Yes." "Talked to her?... I suppose-- What do you think of her?" His cigar glowed into an expectant brightness while Melville hesitated at his answer, and showed his eyes thoughtful upon Melville's face. "I've never thought her--" Melville sought more diplomatic phrasing. "I've never found her exceptionally attractive before. Handsome, you know, but not--winning. But this time, she seemed ... rather splendid." "She is," said Chatteris, "she is." He sat forward and began flicking imaginary ash from the end of his cigar. "She _is_ splendid," he admitted. "You--only begin to imagine. You don't, my dear man, know that girl. She is not--quite--in your line. She is, I assure you, the straightest and cleanest and clearest human being I have ever met. She believes so firmly, she does right so simply, there is a sort of queenly benevolence, a sort of integrity of benevolence----" He left the sentence unfinished, as if unfinished it completely expressed his thought. "She wants you to go back to her," said Melville bluntly. "I know," said Chatteris and flicked again at that ghostly ash. "She has written that.... That's just where her complete magnificence comes in. She doesn't fence and fool about, as the she-women do. She doesn't squawk and say, 'You've insulted me and everything's at an end;' and she doesn't squawk and say, 'For God's sake come back to me!' _She_ doesn't say, she 'won't 'ave no truck with me not after this.' She writes--straight. I don't believe, Melville, I half knew her until all this business came up. She comes out.... Before that it was, as you said, and I quite perceive--I perceived all along--a little too--statistical."