Crescendo

'Winter?' he asked.

'Windy,' she laughed. 'The rain comes through

the walls on stormy nights. It's a very old house. The walls are enormously thick and when the wind blows fiercely the rain pours through them.'

He glanced down the cliff at where a bushy white tail was hunting among the rough grass. 'Your dog appears to be enjoying himself.'

'Oh, Ruffy often starts rabbits on the cliff. If he's very quiet he can sometimes get quite close before they dive back into their burrows.'

He nodded. 'You don't go down there too, do you?' His eyes skimmed the narrow, winding path worn by feet over the years. 'It looks very dangerous to me.'

'I've used it all my life. I'm quite safe on it.' Marina gave him a little grin. 'Honestly.' Turning away she moved to the top of the path down the cliffs and heard him coming behind her. Looking back over her shoulder she caught his eyes fixed on her. It gave her a strange feeling to see his head at that angle, the hard dark features almost in­verted, peculiarly familiar to her. She knew she had never seen him before, yet when she looked at him she found nothing strange about him. She felt as if she had known him for years.

'Let me go first,' he said roughly.

Laughing, she shook her head. 'Really, there's no need. I'm quite safe on it.'

'All the same ...' he said, and his hands went to her small waist, lifting her like a doll out of his path. Before she had realised what he meant to do he was in front of her, moving down the cliff. Marina fol­lowed with surprise and amusement.

Halfway do

wn there was a grassy ledge, and al- most by silent consent they both sat down on it. At the edge a patch of short-stemmed pink flowers blew in the wind. The stranger flicked a finger over them.

'Pretty. What are they called?'

'Thrift,' she said.

His fine brows rose. 'An unromantic name for such a pretty flower.'

'I suppose it is.' She had never thought about it, and her blank face confessed as much. 'There are lots of them. They grow all over the cliff paths.'

His eyes ran across the tussocky grass and gorse beyond them. 'There are flowers everywhere, aren't there? What are the white ones?'

'Sea campion,' she said. 'You must have seen them as you drove through the lanes. Campion is every­where at this time of year.'

She had the most curious impression that he was deliberately making conversation, talking about the flowers because they were a safe topic. He looked down at the grass, plucking it with restless fingers.

'What's your name.?'

'Marina,' she said, watching him. His face showed no flicker of reaction. Without looking up he said quietly: 'Marina ... child of the sea. It suits you.'

Most people who had never heard her name be­fore looked interested or surprised or even amused, but this man had shown nothing. Marina told her­self that she was letting her imagination run away with her, yet she could not suppress the feeling that he had known her name before he asked.

'What's your name?' she asked, thinking that it ought to be something very masculine and fierce.

He looked as though he ought to have had a name specially invented for him.

She felt him hesitate. Instinct told her that he did not want to tell her his name. Why? she asked her­self. She stared at the hard clear profile etched against the sky. His mouth indented grimly.

'Gideon,' he said, and looked at her in sharp prob­ing.

She met his eyes curiously. Why was he staring like that?

'Very Biblical,' she said, smiling. 'Gideon what?'

She heard the odd short sigh he gave. 'Gideon Firth,' he said in flat tones.

'Wasn't it Gideon who smote someone with the jawbone of an ass?'