e trees
bent and straightened and bent again before the wind, the sea heaved in
huge unbroken waves right to the horizon; Lundy Island, Hartland, and
Baggy Point had disappeared in a driving sheet of rain.

How beautiful she looked as she stood in the storm, cut, bruised and
dishevelled.

Just for one moment she looked into the eyes of the man she loved,
whose hands were outstretched for the treasures she could not lay
therein; and then she turned and fled as a great streak of lightning
rent the clouds, and thunder like heavy artillery crashed about their
heads.

She had not gone twenty yards when she stumbled and fell heavily.

Her boots were being hurled here and there by the waves in the cove
where she had left them; her left foot was cut and bleeding badly, but
a sudden desperate courage came to her when she felt herself raised and
steadied.

"I shall carry you to the foot of the hill near your cottage!"

She struggled as he lifted her, struggled so violently that he put her
on her feet.

"Don't touch me, Jan, don't come near me, because I--because----"

And the mantle of his satisfaction and content being suddenly rent into
a thousand shreds by the knife edge of his intuition, he put both hands
on her shoulders, looked down into the misery of her eyes, and very
gently said one word.

"Because?"

"Because," and she began to laugh without making any sound, her mouth
twitching, her shoulders shaking, "because I am to be married _to-day_
at noon!"

"To-_day_! but you said----"

"I lied."

"You lied--to _me_!"

She made a little sound which reminded him of an animal agonising in a
trap, whilst the fury of his own pain drove him to hurt her even more.

"Why--_lie_?"

"Why?" her eyes blazed as she defied the storm, her hell and fate.
"Why?--because I love you, because I love you so much that I wanted to
cheat life out of one month of happiness. And I have had it--I have
had it--and I love you----"

She flung her hands up to the stormy skies and brought them down,
clenched against her breast. "I love you, _God_ hear me, I _love_ you!"

And with a terrible cry that went wailing out to sea she fled away
through the lash of the blinding storm.

CHAPTER XXIII

"The lighted end of a torch may be turned towards the
ground, but the flames still point upwards."--_The Satakas_.

The church was simply packed!

The lucky ones, almost all women, wedged tight and fast, crushed their
beautif