y.
"It wasn't right of me. Only--when I saw you so unhappy--I
couldn't--somehow--keep it in any longer. Dear Scott, don't you
think--before--before we go any further--you had better--forget it
and--give me up?"

"No, I don't think so." Scott spoke very softly, with the utmost
tenderness, into her ear. "Don't you realize," he said, "that we belong
to each other? Could there possibly be anyone else for either you or me?"

She did not answer him; only she clung a little closer. And, after a
moment, as she felt the drawing of his hold, "Don't kiss me---yet!" she
begged him tremulously. "Let us wait till--the morning!"

His arms relaxed, "It is very near the morning now," he said. "Shall we
go and watch for it?"

They rose together. Dinah's eyes sought his for one shy, fleeting second,
falling instantly as if half-dazzled, half-afraid. He took her hand and
led her quietly from the room.

It was no longer dark in the passage outside. A pearly light was growing.
The splash of the sea sounded very far below them, as the dim surging of
a world unseen might rise to the watchers on the mountain-top.

They moved to an open window at the end of the passage. No sound came
from Isabel's room close by, and after a few seconds Scott turned
noiselessly aside and entered.

Dinah remained at the open window waiting with a throbbing heart in the
great silence that wrapped the world. She was not afraid, but she longed
for Scott to come back; she was conscious of an urgent need of him.

Several moments passed, and then softly he returned. "No change!" he
whispered. "Eustace will call us--when it comes."

She slipped her hand back into his, without speaking. He made her sit
upon the window-seat, and knelt himself upon it, his arm about her
shoulders, his fingers clasping hers.

She could see his face but vaguely in the dimness, but many times during
that holy hour before the dawn, though he spoke no word, she felt that he
was praying or giving thanks.

Slowly the twilight turned into a velvet dusk. The great Change was
drawing near. The silence lay like a thinning veil of mist upon the
mountain-top. The clouds were parting in the East, all tinged with gold,
like burnished gates flung back for the royal coming of the sun-god. The
stillness that lay upon all the waiting earth was sacred as the hush of
prayer.

Their faces were turned towards the spreading glow. It shone upon them as
it shone upon all beside, widening, intensifying