He stopped awkwardly, aware that, although she was apparently listening to his words, they were making no impression on her senses. A sudden silence fell, and the hitherto unheeded noises of the night smote on his ears with uncanny loudness. The leisured plash of waves so tiny that they might not be dignified by the name of breakers swelled into a certain strength and volume as his range of hearing spread, and the faint cries of invisible sea-fowl now jarred loudly on the quietude of nature. A pebble rolled down the cliff, and he could mark its constantly accelerated leaps until it reached the shingle with a crash which, even to a case-hardened pebble, betokened damage. "Meanwhile----" prompted Nancy, in a still, small voice. So she had followed what he was saying. What was it that he meant to say? Something about the rocks and shoals that lay ahead before he could take her to some safe anchorage. Nevertheless, he shied off at a tangent, and chose haphazard the one topic which his sober judgment might have avoided. "I was about to utter a banal remark; but it may as well be put on record and dismissed," he said. "It is fortunate that I am a rich man. Mere weight of money can achieve nothing against us; while the possession of ample means will simplify matters in so far as we are concerned personally." "Were those really the words on the tip of your tongue, Derry?" "Well, no," he admitted. "Are you afraid of hurting my feelings?" "You are right, Dear. As between you and me there should be no concealment. We have to face the immediate future. We must consider how to surmount the interval, short though it may be----" "Interval! What interval?" "You cannot secure a divorce without some sort of legal process, and the law refuses to be hurried." "Ah, yes. Divorce--law--they are words which have little meaning here and now." "But they are all-important. Awhile ago you spoke of your Paris friends, and there are others, like Mrs. Van Ralten, whose sympathies and help will be of real value in years to come. You see, I want you to hold your pretty little head higher as Mrs. John Darien Power than you ever held it as Mrs. Hugh Marten." "That will cost no great effort, Derry. If we have to pass through an ordeal of publicity, we can surely use the vile means for our own ends, so that our friends may know the whole truth.... Derry, if you were not such a good and honorable man, you would not be so dense." In his anxiety to follow each twist and turn of her reasoning he had crept nearer, and was now on his knees, having imprisoned her hands in his, and peering intently into her face. In that dim light her eyes shone like faintly luminous twin stars, and he laughed joyously when, to his thinking, he had solved the doubt that was troubling her.