him ended suddenly in a most
wistful cry. Chayne caught her to him.

"Oh, Sylvia!" and he added: "The life is not yet saved!"

"Perhaps I am given to the summer," she answered, and then, with a
whimsical change of humor, she laughed tenderly. "Oh, but I wish I
wasn't. You will write? Letters will come from you."

"As often as possible, my dear. But they won't come often."

"Let them be long, then," she whispered, "very long," and she leaned her
head against his shoulder.

"Lie close, my dear," said he. "Lie close!"

For a while longer they talked in low voices to one another, the words
which lovers know and keep fragrant in their memories. The night, warm
and clear, drew on toward morning, and the passage of the hours was
unremarked. For both of them there was a glory upon the moonlit land and
sea which made of it a new world. And into this new world both walked for
the first time--walked in their youth and hand in hand. Each for the
first time knew the double pride of loving and being loved. In spite of
their troubles they were not to be pitied, and they knew it. The gray
morning light flooded the sky and turned the moon into a pale white disk.

"Lie close, my dear," said he. "It is not time."

In the trees in the garden below the blackbirds began to bustle amongst
the leaves, and all at once their clear, sweet music thrilled upward to
the lovers in the hollow of the down.

"Lie close, my dear," he repeated.

They watched the sun leap into the heavens and flash down the Channel in
golden light.

"The night has gone," said Chayne.

"Nothing can take it from us while we live," answered Sylvia, very
softly. She raised herself from her couch of leaves.

Then from one of the cottages in the tiny village a blue coil of smoke
rose into the air.

"It is time," said Chayne, and they rose and hand in hand walked down the
slope of the hill to the house. Sylvia unlatched the door noiselessly and
went in. Chayne stepped in after her; and in the silent hall they took
farewell of one another.

"Good-by, my dear," she whispered, with the tears in her eyes and in her
voice, and she clung to him a little and so let him go. She held the door
ajar until the sound of his footsteps had died away--and after that. For
she fancied that she heard them still, since, she so deeply wished to
hear them. Then with a breaking heart she went up the stairs to her room.

CHAPTER XXI

CHAYNE COMES TO CONCLUSIONS

"Six weeks