y near
completion. The salt was regaining its savour. Life was worth living
again.

And it was then, when he had come through the valley and was ready to
climb again, that the glory came to him.

As the two friends sprang lightly over the turf wall into the garden
of the Red House, they saw a sight which one of them will not forget
as long as he lives.

In the gap of the tall hedge, where the path led down to the
cottage,--ringed in its darkness like a lovely picture in a sombre
frame, with a pale eucalyptus rising stately on either side; and
behind it all, and gleaming softly through and round it all, the
tender glories of the new day,--stood a girl in a dove-coloured dress,
bareheaded, holding the dew-pearled branches apart with her two hands,
and gazing at him with wide eyes, and parted lips, and startled face.

And the girl was Margaret Brandt.

IV

Graeme's first thought was that he was dreaming. He blinked his eyes
to make sure they were not playing him false.

If she had disappeared at that moment, he would have sworn to
hallucinations and the visibility of spirits to the day of his death.

But she did not disappear, and Punch proved her no spirit by stalking
gravely up to give her welcome. Without taking her startled eyes off
Graeme, she dropped one white hand on to the great brown head and the
diamonds sprinkled her dove-coloured dress.

"Mr. Graeme!" she said, in a voice which very fully expressed her own
doubts as to his reality also.

"Mar--Miss Brandt? ... Is it possible?"

They had both drawn nearer, he along the broad gravel walk, she along
the narrow path between the eucalyptus trees.

"Are you quite sure you are real?" he asked breathlessly, and for
answer she laughed and stretched a friendly hand towards him.

He took it with shining eyes, and then bent suddenly and kissed it
gently, and his eyes were shining still more brightly as she drew it
hastily away.

"But whatever brings you here?" she asked abruptly.

"We're just out of the sea,"--and the joy of the sea and the morning,
and this greatest thing of all, was in his face.

"But _why_ are you here? What are you doing here?"

"Doing? We're living here."

"Did you know I was here? How----?" she began, with a puzzled wrinkle
of the fair white brow, and stopped.

"I did not know. I wish I had."

"If you did not know, how--why----?"

"If I had known perhaps I should not have dared to follow you. On the
whole I'm glad I did