sfaction, and having blissfully taken the girl's consent to
the programme for granted, failed to read the agony written across her
face in capital letters.

"Tell me that you will be content, dear. I'm rich enough, but nothing
compared with--oh! tell me, what do you like--what do you want--what do
you _really_ care for!"

She freed her hands and turned to look out to sea, where the day had
been born in agony upon a bed of sullen, unbroken water.

Then she looked straight down at the waves flinging themselves against
the cliffs, drenching her with spray, moaning, fretting at the barrier,
retiring only to do the same thing over and over again.

"What do I want, O Man whom I love? I want a white house within high,
white walls, on the edge of the sea. I want my arms full of
children--yours and mine. I want love, oh! love and yet more love,
that is what I want!"

The man twisted her round and held her at arms' length, her heels
within an inch of the edge, her body bent back over the chasm, and her
hair, spreading like a banner in the tearing wind, swept about his
shoulders and across his face, intoxicating him with its perfume and
silken caress.

Passion swept over him, he shook her like a reed, and her foot slipped
off the earth into nothingness.

But not a word said she, though she prayed that he might suddenly let
go his hold and send her crashing to sweet death on the rocks beneath.

You see what happens when you are decent and honest and have a mind to
keep your word--just death rather than dishonour, and pain to others.

Whereas if only she had been dishonest, and therefore commonplace, she
would either have chucked her given word to the devil, or the deep grey
sea over which she stood, and cleared for her own happiness and a
marriage licence; or kept her word in one sense while making deedy
little plans of triangular pattern for future reference.

"Is that what you want, oh! heart of mine?" said Jan Cuxson, exulting
in the sensation that his hands alone held her metaphorically and
actually safe from the depths beneath. "And that is what I am going to
give you, beloved, and more, much more in exchange for the treasure you
will put into my hands. Oh! Leonie, my love----"

And yet he did not kiss her, but pulled her farther inland and let her
go as she essayed to free herself, having come to the absolute breaking
point.

What a wooing!

The copper coloured clouds were massed above and about them, th