ood, dear girl!' said he, and, seizing her hand, set upon
her cheek the kind of kiss that should have been the response to hers on
the day of his coming.

'Darling Avice, forgive me for the slight that day! Say you do. Come,
now! And then I'll say to you what I have never said to any other woman,
living or dead: "Will you have me as your husband?"'

'Ah!--mother says I am only one of many!'

'You are not, dear. You knew me when I was young, and others didn't.'

Somehow or other her objections were got over, and though she did not
give an immediate assent, she agreed to meet him later in the afternoon,
when she walked with him to the southern point of the island called the
Beal, or, by strangers, the Bill, pausing over the treacherous cavern
known as Cave Hole, into which the sea roared and splashed now as it had
done when they visited it together as children. To steady herself while
looking in he offered her his arm, and she took it, for the first time
as a woman, for the hundredth time as his companion.

They rambled on to the lighthouse, where they would have lingered longer
if Avice had not suddenly remembered an engagement to recite poetry
from a platform that very evening at the Street of Wells, the village
commanding the entrance to the island--the village that has now advanced
to be a town.

'Recite!' said he. 'Who'd have thought anybody or anything could recite
down here except the reciter we hear away there--the never speechless
sea.'

'O but we are quite intellectual now. In the winter particularly. But,
Jocelyn--don't come to the recitation, will you? It would spoil my
performance if you were there, and I want to be as good as the rest.'

'I won't if you really wish me not to. But I shall meet you at the door
and bring you home.'

'Yes!' she said, looking up into his face. Avice was perfectly happy
now; she could never have believed on that mortifying day of his coming
that she would be so happy with him. When they reached the east side of
the isle they parted, that she might be soon enough to take her place on
the platform. Pierston went home, and after dark, when it was about the
hour for accompanying her back, he went along the middle road northward
to the Street of Wells.

He was full of misgiving. He had known Avice Caro so well of old that
his feeling for her now was rather comradeship than love; and what he
had said to her in a moment of impulse that morning rather appalled
him in its conse