eased, and she
slept the untroubled sleep of a happy child.

All the best and noblest in Jim Airth awoke at that hallowed memory of
faithful strength on his part, and trustful peace on hers.

"My God," he said, "what a nightmare it has been! And what a fool, I, to
think anything could come between us. Has she not been utterly mine since
that sacred night spent here? And I have left her to loneliness and
grief?.... I will arise and go to my beloved. No past, no shame, no pride
of mine, shall come between us any more."

He raised himself on his elbow and looked over the edge. The moonlight
shone on rippling water lapping the foot of the cliff. He could see his
watch by its bright light. Midnight! He must wait until three, for the
tide to go down. He leaned back again, his arms folded across his chest;
but Myra was still safely within them.

Two minutes later, Jim Airth slept soundly.

The dawn awoke him. He scrambled down to the shore, and once again swam
up the golden path toward the rising sun.

As he got back into his clothes, it seemed to him that every vestige of
that black nightmare had been left behind in the gay tossing waters.

On his way to the railway station, he passed a farm. The farmer's wife
had been up since sunrise, churning. She gladly gave him a simple
breakfast of home-made bread, with butter fresh from the churn.

He caught the six o'clock express for town; tubbed, shaved, and lunched,
at his Club.

At a quarter to three he was just coming down the steps into Piccadilly,
very consciously "clothed and in his right mind," debating which train he
could take for Shenstone if--as in duty bound--he looked in at his
publishers' first; when a telegraph boy dashed up the steps into the
Club, and the next moment the hall-porter hastened after him with a
telegram.

Jim Airth read it; took one look at his watch; then jumped headlong into
a passing taxicab.

"Charing Cross!" he shouted to the chauffeur. "And a sovereign if you do
it in five minutes."

As the flag tinged down, and the taxi glided swiftly forward into the
whirl of traffic, Jim Airth unfolded the telegram and read it again.

It had been handed in at Shenstone at 2.15.

Come to me at once.
Myra.

A shout of exultation arose within him.

CHAPTER XXI

MICHAEL VERITAS

On the morning of that day, while Jim Airth, braced with a new resolve
and a fresh outlook