I was almost startled when she turned round, and I saw her face quite plainly. The same light that revealed her pretty little face and figure, threw a deeper shade over me. She looked anxiously up and down, yet by a singular fatality never looked at the corner of the wooden building where I sat. I have often wondered since that I did not cry out when I saw that face--so wonderfully beautiful, but so marble white, so sad, so intent, so earnest, the beautiful eyes wild with pain, the beautiful mouth quivering. I can see it now, and I shall see it until I die. There was a low, broad brow, and golden-brown hair clustered on it--hair that was like a crown; the face was oval-shaped, exquisitely beautiful, with a short upper lip, a full, lovely under one, and a perfectly modeled chin. But it was the face of a woman almost mad with despair. "Oh, Heaven! if I dare--if I dare!" she cried. She flung up her hands with the gesture of one who has no hope; she looked over at the sea, once more at the pier, then slowly turned away, and again quite plainly I heard the words, "Oh, Heaven! if I dare--if I dare!" She then walked slowly away, and I lost sight of her under the silent arches; but I could not forget her. What a face!--what beauty, what passion, what pain, what love and despair, what goodness and power! What a face! When should I ever forget it? Impelled by curiosity, I went to the railings, and I stood where she stood. I looked down. How deep and fathomless it seemed, this running sea! What was it she had dropped there? In my mind's eye I saw a most pathetic little bundle made of love-letters; I pictured them tied with a pretty faded ribbon; there would be dried flowers, each one a momento of some happy occasion. I could fancy the dried roses, the withered forget-me-nots, the violets, with some faint odor lingering still around them. Then there would be a valentine, perhaps two or three; a photograph, and probably an engagement ring. She had flung them away into the depths of the sea, and only Heaven knows what hopes and love she had flung with them! I could understand now what that cry meant--"If I dare--if I dare!" It meant that if she dare she would fling herself into the sea after them! How many hopes had been flung, like hers, into those black depths! Then I came to the conclusion that I was, to say the least of it, a simpleton to waste so much time and thought about another person's affairs. I remember that, as I walked slowly down the pier, I met several people, and that I felt a glow of pleasure at the thought that some people had the good sense to prefer the Chain Pier. And then I went home.