very doubt of his life.
He felt, understood, with that understanding which is quicker than
thought. The Silver Lady went on now with a rush:

'See, I have trusted you indeed! I have given away another woman's
secret; but I do it without fear. I can see that you also are troubled;
and when I look back on my own life and remember the trouble that sent me
out of the world; a lonely recluse here in this spot far from the stress
of life, I rejoice that any act of mine can save such another tragedy as
my own. I see that I need not go into detail. You know that I am
speaking truth. It was before you came so heroically on this new scene
that she told me her secret. At a time when nothing was known of you
except that you had disappeared. When she laid bare her poor bleeding
heart to me, she did it in such wise that for an instant I feared that it
was a murder which she had committed. Indeed, she called it so! You
understand that I know all your secret; all her part in it at least. And
I know that you understand what loving duty lies before you. I see it in
your eyes; your brave, true eyes! Go! and the Lord be with thee!' Her
accustomed idiom had returned with prayer. She turned her head away,
and, standing up, leaned against the window. Bending over, he took her
hand and said simply:

'God bless you! I shall come back to thank you either to-night or to-
morrow; and I hope that she will be with me.'

He went quickly out of the room. The woman stood for long looking out of
the window, and following with tear-dimmed eyes the movement of his great
black horse as he swept across country straight as the crow flies,
towards the headland whither Stephen had gone.

* * * * *

Stephen passed over the wide expanse without thought; certainly without
memory of it. Never in her after-life could she recall any thought that
had passed through her mind from the time she left the open gate of the
windmill yard till she pulled up her smoking, panting horse beside the
ruin of the fisher's house.

Stephen was not unhappy! She was not happy in any conscious form. She
was satisfied rather than dissatisfied. She was a woman! A woman who
waited the coming of a man!

For a while she stood at the edge of the cliff, and looked at the turmoil
of the tide churning on the rocks below. Her heart went out in a great
burst of thankfulness that it was her hand which had been privileged to
aid in rescuing so dear a life. Then she l