g
cry of Lady Isobel's heart as she kissed Thomas Jefferson Brown, once,
and then three times, before he dropped back into the sea again.

"Good-by, sweetheart!" he said.

In the eyes that looked up at her, in his eyes in the one last look of
love that he said, "Good-by." Lady Isobel saw the truth, and stretched
out her arm to him.

"Stop! Come back! Take me with you!" she cried. "I want to go with you!"

And there, in the wildness of that sea, four miles from shore, Thomas
Jefferson Brown seemed to heave himself up out of the water, as if the
strength of a thousand swimmers had suddenly come to him. He let out a
cry of triumph, of love, of joy; and he came back and gripped the canoe
again, his gray eyes flashing, his face glowing with a strange flush.

"You want to go with me?" he said. "Come!"

He held up his arms, and with a cry that wasn't fear Lady Isobel went
into them, while Thomas Jefferson Brown called to Lord Meton:

"Stick to the canoe! It will take you to the island!"

IV

The shore was a low, dark streak, four miles away--an appalling distance
away; but as she clung lightly to his shoulders, as Thomas Jefferson
Brown told her to do, the horror and the fear of the big sea went out
of Lady Isobel's brave little heart. She put her face down against his
neck, pulled back his wet hair, and kissed him. God bless all such true
hearts, wherever they be!

"We'll make it, Tom--we'll make it!" she told him a hundred times.

He felt the warm caresses of her lips, the thrilling love of her voice,
and he knew that she was ready to die with him.

He swam in a strange way--a wonderfully strange way--did Thomas
Jefferson Brown. He stood almost erect in the water, his head and
shoulders clear; and now and then he stopped to rest, and it seemed no
test for him at all to float with the weight of the woman he loved, his
face turned up to her in those moments, her glorious blue eyes devouring
him, her sweet lips kissing him--still kissing him.

He was doing a thing that she knew no other man in the world could do.
She kept telling him so, while the land drew nearer and nearer, until at
last she cried out in joy that she could see the little bushes along the
shore.

"Another mile, Tom!" she said. "Only another mile, and then--"

"And then--" he said.

"And then--life!" she cried. "Life for you and me!"

He went on, seeming to grow stronger as the shore drew nearer. It was
wonderful; but at last, when th