held out her hand a little
nervously.

He took it, holding it closely in his, and looking down at her with the
strange expression of a man who strives to impress upon his mind the
picture of a face he may not see again, so that in a lonely future he
shall find comfort in remembering.

"Good-bye!" he said, at last, very gravely. Then a queer little smile,
half-bitter, half-tender, curving his lips, he added: "I shall always
have this one day for which to thank whatever gods there be."

CHAPTER XII

A REVOKE

Sara lay long awake that night. Under Jane Crab's bluff and kindly
ministrations, her feeling of utter bodily exhaustion had given place
to an exquisite sense of mental and physical well-being, and, freed from
the shackles of material discomfort, her thoughts flew backward over the
events of the day.

All _was_ well--gloriously, blessedly well! There could be no
misunderstanding that brief, passionate moment when Garth had held her
in his arms; and the blinding anguish of those hours which had followed,
when she had not known whether he were alive or dead, had shown her her
own heart.

Love had come to her--the love which Patrick Lovell had called the one
altogether good and perfect gift--and with it came a tremulous unrest,
a shy sweetness of desire that crept through all her veins like the
burning of a swift flame.

She felt no fear or shame of love. Sara would never be afraid of life
and its demands, and it seemed to her a matter of little moment that
Garth had made no conventional avowal of his love. She did not, on that
account, pretend, even to herself, as many women would have done, that
her own heart was untouched, but recognized and accepted the fact that
love had come to her with absolute simplicity.

Nor did she doubt or question Garth's feeling for her. She _knew_, in
every fibre of her being, that he loved her, and she was ready to wait
quite patiently and happily the few hours that must elapse before he
could come to her and tell her so.

Yet she longed, with a woman's natural longing, to hear him say in
actual words all that his whole attitude towards her had implied, craved
for the moment when the beloved voice should ask for that surrender
which in spirit she had already made.

She rose early, with a ridiculous feeling that it would bring the time
a little nearer, and Jane Crab stared in amazement when she appeared
downstairs while yet the preparations for breakfast were hardly in