The man threw out a hand towards him, and his eyes were wild, and his
voice suddenly high. "I shall kill myself. If in no other way--at the
foot of yonder dark precipice there, where the waves are green, and the
white surge lifts and falls, and that little thread of water trembles
down. There at any rate is ... sleep."

"That's unreasonable," said Isbister, startled at the man's hysterical
gust of emotion. "Drugs are better than that."

"There at any rate is sleep," repeated the stranger, not heeding him.

Isbister looked at him. "It's not a cert, you know," he remarked.
"There's a cliff like that at Lulworth Cove--as high, anyhow--and a
little girl fell from top to bottom. And lives to-day--sound and well."

"But those rocks there?"

"One might lie on them rather dismally through a cold night, broken bones
grating as one shivered, chill water splashing over you. Eh?"

Their eyes met. "Sorry to upset your ideals," said Isbister with a sense
of devil-may-careish brilliance. "But a suicide over that cliff (or any
cliff for the matter of that), really, as an artist--" He laughed. "It's
so damned amateurish."

"But the other thing," said the sleepless man irritably, "the other
thing. No man can keep sane if night after night--"

"Have you been walking along this coast alone?"