‘Aha! I see you at last!’

She started, slipped, fell; and without attempting to rise, listened, terrified. She heard heavy breathing, a clatter of wooden clogs. It stopped.

‘Where the devil did you pass?’ said an invisible man, hoarsely.

She held her breath. She recognized the voice. She had not seen him fall. Was he pursuing her there dead, or perhaps … alive?

She lost her head. She cried from the crevice where she lay huddled, ‘Never, never!’

‘Ah! You are still there. You led me a fine dance. Wait, my beauty, I must see how you look after all this. You wait.…’

Millot was stumbling, laughing, swearing meaninglessly out of pure satisfaction, pleased with himself for having run down that fly-by-night. ‘As if there were such things as ghosts! Bah! It took an old African soldier to show those clodhoppers. … But it was curious. Who the devil was she?’

Susan listened, crouching. He was coming for her, this dead man. There was no escape. What a noise he made amongst the stones.… She saw his head rise up, then the shoulders. He was tall—her own man! His long arms waved about, and it was his own voice sounding a little strange … because of the scissors. She scrambled out quickly, rushed to the edge of the causeway, and turned round. The man stood still on a high stone, detaching himself in dead black on the glitter of the sky.

‘Where are you going to?’ he called roughly.

She answered, ‘Home!’ and watched him intensely. He made a striding, clumsy leap on to another boulder, and stopped again, balancing himself, then said:

‘Ha! ha! Well, I am going with you. It’s the least I can do. Ha! ha! ha!’

She stared at him till her eyes seemed to become glowing coals that burned deep into her brain, and yet she was in mortal fear of making out the well-known features. Below her the sea lapped softly against the rock with a splash, continuous and gentle.

The man said, advancing another step:

‘I am coming for you. What do you think?’

She trembled. Coming for her! There was no escape, no peace, no hope. She looked round despairingly. Suddenly the whole shadowy coast, the blurred islets, the heaven itself, swayed about twice, then came to a rest. She closed her eyes and shouted:

‘Can’t you wait till I am dead!’

She was shaken by a furious hate for that shade that pursued her in this world, unappeased even by death in its longing for an heir that would be like other people’s children.

‘Hey! What?’ said Millot, keeping his distance prudently. He was saying to himself: ‘Look out! Some lunatic. An accident happens soon.’

She went on, wildly: