ily, you've just twisted your fingers round my heart and I can't
loose them."

"Please," said Cecily, "ah, no, please don't...." Some irresponsible
imp in her intelligence made her want to tell him that it wasn't Jonah
who looked for a sign.

"Listen," said Armitage. He was literally holding her before him by
the sheer strength of his kindly, compelling personality. "When this
racket started--this war--I told them at the Admiralty my age was
forty-five. It was a lie--I am fifty-two. I've knocked about the
world; I know men and cities and the places where there are neither.
But I've lived clean all my life and I was never gladder of it than I
am at this moment...."

Cecily had a conviction that unless she could stop him she would have
to start crying very soon. But there were no words somehow that seemed
adequate to the situation.

"I know, dear," he went on in his grave quiet voice, "that at your age
money, and all the things it buys, seem just empty folly. But, believe
me, there comes a time when being rich counts a lot towards happiness.
I'm not trying to dazzle you, but you know all mine is yours--you shall
live in Park Lane if you care to--or I'll turn all wide Scotland into a
deer forest for you to play in...."

He paused. "But there is one thing, of course, that might make all
this sound vulgar and sordid." He considered her with his clear blue
eyes. "Are you in love with anyone else?" he asked.

Cecily clutched recklessly at the alternative to absurd tears.

"Yes," she said.

Armitage stood quite still for a moment. His calm, direct gaze never
left her face, and after a moment he squared his big shoulders with an
abrupt, characteristic movement.

"Then he is the luckiest man," he said quietly, "that ever won God's
most perfect gift."

He gave her a funny stiff little inclination of the head and walked
away.

* * * * *

Otto von Sperrgebiet did not raise the periscope above the surface
again for some hours. The Submarine, entirely submerged, drove through
the water until night. After nightfall they travelled on the surface
until the first pale bars of dawn appeared in the eastern sky. Von
Sperrgebiet was on the conning-tower as soon as it was light, searching
the horizon with his glasses.

"It is strange," he said to his Second-in-Command. "We ought to have
sighted that light vessel before now." At his bidding a sailor fetched
the lead line and took a sou