There was a little pause. Harry was surprised. Here was what he had been wanting--friendship; a week ago he would have seized it with both hands; now he was a little distrustful; a week ago it would have been natural, delightful; now it was unusual, even a little absurd. "I should be very glad," he said gravely. "I--scarcely----" "Oh," Bethel broke in, "we shall come together naturally--there's no fear of that. I could see at once that you know the mysteries of this place just as I do. Those others here are blind. I've been waiting for some one who would understand. But I don't want you to listen to those other people about me; they will tell you a good deal--and most of it's true. I don't blame 'em, but I'm curiously anxious for you not to think with them. It's ridiculous, I know, when I had never seen you before. If you only knew how long I'd been waiting--to talk to some one--about--all this." He waved his hand and they stopped. They were standing on the moor. Above their head mighty grey clouds were driving like fleets before the wind, and the moon, a cold, lifeless thing, a moon of chiselled marble, appeared, and then, as though frightened at the wild flight of the clouds, vanished. The sea, pearl grey, lay like mist on the horizon, and its voice was gentle and tired, as though it were slowly dying into sleep. They were near the Four Stones--gaunt, grey, and old. The dog had followed Harry from the inn and now ran, a white shadow, in front of him. "Let me tell you," Bethel said, "about myself. You know I was born in London--the son of a doctor with a very considerable practice. I received an excellent education, Rugby and Cambridge, and was trained for the law. I was, I believe, a rather ordinary person with a rather more than ordinary power of concentration, and I got on. I built up a business and was extremely and very conventionally happy. I married and we had a little girl. And then, one summer, we came down to Cornwall for our holiday. It was St. Ives. I remember that first morning as though it were yesterday. It was grey with the sea flinging great breakers. There was a smell of clover and cornflowers in the air, and great sheets of flaming poppies in the cornfields. But there was more than that. It was Cornwall, something magical, and that strange sense of old history and customs that you get nowhere else in quite the same way. Ah! but why analyse it?--you know as well as I do what I mean. A new man was born in me that day. I had been sociable and fond of little quite ordinary pleasures that came my way, now I wanted to be alone. Their conversation worried me; it seemed to be pointless and concerned with things that did not matter at all. I had done things like other men--now it was all to no purpose. I used to lie for hours on the cliffs watching the sea. I was often out all day, and I met all sorts of people, tramps, wasters, vagabonds, and they seemed the only people worth talking to.