She seemed to be always saying _Come along_. I obeyed, full of gratitude and relief. She skipped to the tiny turret which rose above our heads, and lifted the door-latch. But, instead of disappearing within, she turned and looked at me in white dismay. The door was bolted. Her look roused what there was of manhood in me. I felt that, as it had now come to the last gasp, it was mine to comfort her. ‘We are no worse than we were,’ I said. ‘Never mind.’ ‘I don’t know that,’ she answered mysteriously.--‘Can _you_ go back as you came? _I_ can’t.’ I looked over the edge of the battlement where I stood. There was the buttress crossing the angle of moonlight, with its shadow lying far down on the wall. I shuddered at the thought of renewing my unspeakable dismay. But what must be must. [Illustration: SHE BENT OVER THE BATTLEMENT, STOOPED HER FACE TOWARD ME, AND KISSED ME.] Besides, Clara had praised me for creeping where she could fly: now I might show her that I could creep where she could not fly. ‘I will try,’ I returned, putting one leg through an embrasure, and holding on by the adjoining battlement. ‘Do take care, Wilfrid,’ she cried, stretching out her hands, as if to keep me from falling. A sudden pulse of life rushed through me. All at once I became not only bold, but ambitious. ‘Give me a kiss,’ I said, ‘before I go.’ ‘Do you make so much of it?’ she returned, stepping back a pace.--How much a woman she was even then! Her words roused something in me which to this day I have not been able quite to understand. A sense of wrong had its share in the feeling; but what else I can hardly venture to say. At all events, an inroad of careless courage was the consequence. I stepped at once upon the buttress, and stood for a moment looking at her--no doubt with reproach. She sprang towards me. ‘I beg your pardon,’ she said. The end of the buttress was a foot or two below the level of the leads, where Clara stood. She bent over the battlement, stooped her face towards me, and kissed me on the mouth. My only answer was to turn and walk down the buttress, erect; a walk which, as the arch of the buttress became steeper, ended in a run and a leap on to the gutter of the hall. There I turned, and saw her stand like a lady in a ballad leaning after me in the moonlight. I lifted my cap and sped away, not knowing whither, but fancying that out of her sight I could make up my mind better. Nor was I mistaken. The moment I sat down, my brains began to go about, and in another moment I saw what might be attempted.