A glare of gas lamps splashed the wet surface
of the parade with fire; while below him, against the sea wall, a high tide
spouted and roared. Now and again, after a heavy muffled thud of sea
against stone, columns of glimmering, gray foam shot upward, like gigantic
ghosts out of the water. For a moment they towered in the air, then,
wind-driven, swept hissing across the black and shining surfaces of the
deserted parade.
Noy stood here a moment, and the cold wind cooled him, and the riot and
agony of the sea boiling against the granite face of the breakwater chimed
with the riot and agony of his mind, whose hopes were now rent in tatters,
riven, splintered and disannulled by chance. He turned a moment where the
Newlyn harbor light flashed across the darkness to him. From his standpoint
he knew that a line drawn through that light must fall upon the cottage of
the Tregenzas beyond it on the shore, and, fixing his eyes where the
building lay hidden, he stretched out his hand and spoke aloud.
"May God strike me blind and daft if ever I looks 'pon yon light an' yonder
cot again till the man be dead."
Then he turned, and was about to seek the station, with a vague purpose to
go straight to London at the earliest opportunity, when a wiser thought
arrested this determination. He must learn all that it was possible to
learn concerning the last days of Joan. Mrs. Tregenza had explained her
stepdaughter's life at Drift.
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