They walked out of the shadows and up a long sloping path until
Sandgate, as a little line of lights, came into view below. Presently
they came out upon the brow and walked together (the band playing with a
remote and sweetening indistinctness far away behind them) towards the
cliff at the end. They stood for a little while in silence looking down.
Melville made a guess at his companion's thoughts.
"Why not come down to-night?" he asked.
"On a night like this!" Chatteris turned about suddenly and regarded the
moonlight and the sea. He stood quite still for a space, and that cold
white radiance gave an illusory strength and decision to his face.
"No," he said at last, and the word was almost a sigh.
"Go down to the girl below there. End the thing. She will be there,
thinking of you----"
"No," said Chatteris, "no."
"It's not ten yet," Melville tried again.
Chatteris thought. "No," he answered, "not to-night. To-morrow, in the
light of everyday.
"I want a good, gray, honest day," he said, "with a south-west wind....
These still, soft nights! How can you expect me to do anything of that
sort to-night?"
And then he murmured as if he found the word a satisfying word to
repeat, "Renunciation."
"By Jove!" he said with the most astonishing transition, "but this is a
night out of fairyland! Look at the lights of those windows below there
and then up--up into this enormous blue of sky. And there, as if it were
fainting with moonlight--shines one star."