wn; caught sight
of Charlie and Harry turning heels over head down the <DW72> toward the
house; found that my wife had gone home--in fact, that only Connie and
Wynnie were left. The sun had disappeared under a cloud, and the sea
had turned a little slaty; the yellow flowers in the short down-grass
no longer caught the eye with their gold, and the wind that bent their
tops had just the suspicion of an edge in it. And Wynnie's face looked
a little cloudy too, I thought, and I feared that it was my fault. I
fancied there was just a tinge of beseeching in Connie's eye, as I
looked at her, thinking there might be danger for her in the
sunlessness of the wind. But I do not know that all this, even the
clouding of the sun, may not have come out of my own mind, the result
of my not being quite satisfied with myself because of the mood I had
been in. My feeling had altered considerably in the mean time.

"Run, Wynnie, and ask Mr. Percivale, with my compliments, to come and
lunch with us," I said--more to let her see I was not displeased,
however I might have looked, than for any other reason. She
went--sedately as before.

Almost as soon as she was gone, I saw that I had put her in a
difficulty. For I had discovered, very soon after coming into these
parts, that her head was no more steady than my own on high places, for
she up had never been used to such in our own level country, except,
indeed, on the stair that led down to the old quarry and the well,
where, I can remember now, she always laid her hand on the balustrade
with some degree of tremor, although she had been in the way of going
up and down from childhood. But if she could not cross that narrow and
really dangerous isthmus, still less could she call to a man she had
never seen but once, across the intervening chasm. I therefore set off
after her, leaving Connie lying there in loneliness, between the sea
and the sky. But when I got to the other side of the little tower,
instead of finding her standing hesitating on the brink of action,
there she was on the roc