Over the flat expanses the tide, with no obstacle to slacken or impede its progress, rushes with furious haste--as fast, so the fisherfolks tell, as a good horse in full gallop. It was the beginning of the winter afternoon on the day after Gortre had visited Eastworld. There was little wind, but the sky hung low in cold and menacing clouds, ineffably cheerless and gloomy. A single figure moved slowly through these forbidding solitudes. It was Gertrude Hunt. She wore a simple coat and skirt of grey tweed, a tam-o'-shanter cap of crimson wool, and carried a walking cane. She had come out alone to think out a problem out there between the sea and sky, with no human help or sympathy to aid her. The strong, passionate face was paler than before and worn by suffering. Yet as she strode along there was a wild beauty in her appearance which seemed to harmonise with the very spirit and meaning of the place where she was. And yet the face had lost the old jaunty hardihood. Qualities in it which had before spoken of an impudent self-sufficiency now were changed to quiet purpose. There was an appeal for pity in the eyes which had once been bright with shamelessness and sin. The woman was thinking deeply. Her head was bowed as she walked, the lips set close together. Gortre's visit had moved her deeply. When she had heard his story something within her, an intuition beyond calm reason, had told her instantly of its truth. She could not have said why she knew this, but she was utterly certain. Her long connection with Llwellyn had left no traces of affection now. As she would kneel in the little windy church on the headland and listen to the rector, an old friend of Father Ripon's, reading prayers, she looked back on her past life as a man going about his business in sunlight remembers some horrid nightmare of the evening past. She but rarely allowed her thoughts to dwell upon the former partner of her sin, but when she did so it was with a sense of shrinking and dislike. As the new Light which filled her life taught, she endeavoured to think of the man with Christian charity and sometimes to pray that his heart also might be touched. But perhaps this was the most difficult of all the duties she set herself, although she had no illusions about the past, realised his kindness to her, and also that she had been at least as bad as he. But now there seemed a great gulf between them which she never cared to pass even in thought. Her repentance was so sincere and deep, her mourning for her misspent life so genuine, that it never allowed her the least iota of spiritual pride--the snare of weaker penitents when they have turned from evil courses. Yet, try as she would, she could never manage to really identify her hopes and prayers with Llwellyn in any vivid way. And now the young clergyman, the actual instrument of her own salvation as she regarded him, had come to her with this story in which she had recognised the truth.