here." A hand strayed to rest,
fluttering, above her heart. "If I should let you go ... Oh, my dear
one, don't, don't go!"

"Mary," he began hoarsely, "I tell you--"

"You're only going, Hugh, because ... because I love you so I ... I am
afraid to let you love me. That's true, isn't it? Hugh--it's true?"

"I can't stay ..." he muttered with a hang-dog air.

She sought support of the wall again, her body shaken by dry sobbing
that it tore his heart to hear. "You--you're really going--?"

He mumbled an almost inaudible avowal of his intention.

"Hugh, you're killing me! If you leave me--"

He gave a gesture of despair and capitulation.

"I've done my best, Mary. I meant to do the right thing. I--"

"Hugh, you mean you won't go?" Joy from a surcharged heart rang vibrant
in every syllable uttered in that marvellous voice.

But now he dared meet her eyes. "Yes," he said, "I won't go"--nodding,
with an apologetic shadow of his twisted smile. "I can't if ... if it
distresses you."

"Oh, my dear, my dear!"

Whitaker started, staggered with amaze, and the burden of his wife in
his arms. Her own arms clipped him close. Her fragrant tear-gemmed face
brushed his. He knew at last the warmth of her sweet mouth, the dear
madness of that first caress.

The breathless seconds spun their golden web of minutes. They did not
move. Round them the silence sang like the choiring seraphim....

Then through the magical hush of that time when the world stood still,
the thin, clear vibrations of a distant hail:

"_Aho-oy!_"

In his embrace his wife stiffened and lifted her head to listen like a
startled fawn. As one their hearts checked, paused, then hammered
wildly. With a common impulse they started apart.

"You heard--?"

"Listen!" He held up a hand.

This time it rang out more near and most unmistakable:

"Ahoy! The house, ahoy!"

With the frenzied leap of a madman, Whitaker gained the kitchen door,
shook it, controlled himself long enough to draw the bolt, and flung out
into the dim silvery witchery of the night. He stood staring, while the
girl stole to his side and caught his arm. He passed it round her,
lifted the other hand, dumbly pointed toward the northern beach. For the
moment he could not trust himself to speak.

In the sweep of the anchorage a small white yacht hovered ghostlike,
broadside to the island, her glowing ports and green starboard lamp
painting the polished ebony of the still waters with the i