These savage birds appealed to all the poetry and yearning in Helena.
They fascinated her, they almost voiced her. She crept nearer and nearer
the edge, feeling she must watch the gulls thread out in flakes of white
above the weed-black rocks. Siegmund stood away back, anxiously. He
would not dare to tempt Fate now, having too strong a sense of death
to risk it.
'Come back, dear. Don't go so near,' he pleaded, following as close as
he might. She heard the pain and appeal in his voice. It thrilled her,
and she went a little nearer. What was death to her but one of her
symbols, the death of which the sagas talk--something grand, and
sweeping, and dark.
Leaning forward, she could see the line of grey sand and the line of
foam broken by black rocks, and over all the gulls, stirring round like
froth on a pot, screaming in chorus.
She watched the beautiful birds, heard the pleading of Siegmund, and she
thrilled with pleasure, toying with his keen anguish.
Helena came smiling to Siegmund, saying: 'They look so fine down there.' He fastened his hands upon her, as a relief from his pain. He was filled
with a keen, strong anguish of dread, like a presentiment. She laughed
as he gripped her.
They went searching for a way of descent. At last Siegmund inquired of
the coastguard the nearest way down the cliff. He was pointed to the
'Path of the Hundred Steps'.
'When is a hundred not a hundred?' he said sceptically, as they
descended the dazzling white chalk. There were sixty-eight steps. Helena
laughed at his exactitude.
'It must be a love of round numbers,' he said.
'No doubt,' she laughed. He took the thing so seriously.
'Or of exaggeration,' he added.
There was a shelving beach of warm white sand, bleached soft as velvet.
A sounding of gulls filled the dark recesses of the headland; a low
chatter of shingle came from where the easy water was breaking; the
confused, shell-like murmur of the sea between the folded cliffs.
Siegmund and Helena lay side by side upon the dry sand, small as two
resting birds, while thousands of gulls whirled in a white-flaked storm
above them, and the great cliffs towered beyond, and high up over the
cliffs the multitudinous clouds were travelling, a vast caravan _en
route_. Amidst the journeying of oceans and clouds and the circling
flight of heavy spheres, lost to sight in the sky, Siegmund and Helena,
two grains of life in the vast movement, were travelling a moment
side by side.