shermen of Shorne Mills, lifted her out of a boat
when the sea was rough and the boat unsteady?

"Let us sit down," Drake said.

There was a big bowlder just within the cave, and Nell seated herself on
it, and he slid down at her side.

"If Dick is angry, you will have to protect me," she said, breaking the
silence which seemed to oppress her with a sense of dread.

"I will; especially as it was my fault," he said. "I didn't want
Dick--for a wonder. I wanted to be--alone--with you again. I have wanted
it every minute since I left you. Do you know why?"

She had grown pale; but she tried to smile, to meet the ardent gaze of
his eyes; but she could not.

"Hadn't--hadn't we better be going back?" she faltered; "it is growing
late."

But her voice was so low that she wondered whether she had spoken aloud.

"I want to tell you that I have missed you, how I have longed for you,"
he went on, not speaking with the fluency for which some of his men
friends envied him, but brokenly, as if the words were all inadequate to
express his meaning. "All the way up to London I thought of you--I could
not help thinking of you. All the time I was there, whether I was alone
or in the midst of a mob of people, I thought of you. I could see your
face, hear your voice. I could not rest day or night. I felt that I must
come back to you; that there would be no peace or contentment for me
unless I could see you, hear you, be near you."

She sat, her hands clasped tightly, her eyes downcast and hidden by the
long dark lashes. Every word he was faltering was making the strangest,
sweetest music in her ears and in her heart. That he should miss
her--want to come back to her!--oh, it could not--could not be true!

"Do you know why?" he went on, looking up at her with a touch of
anxiety, of something like fear in his eyes, for her downcast face told
him nothing; her pallor might only be a sign of fear. "It was because
I--love you."

She trembled, and raised her eyes for one instant; but she could not
meet his--not yet.

"I love you," he said, his voice deepening, so that it was almost
hoarse. "I love you."

Just the three words, but how much they mean! Is it any wonder that the
poet and the novelist are never weary of singing and writing them? and
that the world will never be weary of hearing and reading them? How much
hangs upon the three little words! Love: it is the magic word which
transforms a life. It means a heaven too great for