small New England port, and she had stood on the deck
watching his receding figure under the flag of the gasoline launch as it
made its way towards the deserted wharves. Beyond the wharves was an
elm-arched village street, and above the verdure rose the white cupola of
the house of some prosperous sea-captain of bygone times. Honora had not
wished to go ashore. First he had begged, and then he had laughed as he
had leaped into the launch. She lay in a chaise longue, watching it
swinging idly at the dock.

The night before he had written letters and telegrams. Once he had looked
up at her as she sat with a book in her hand across the saloon, and
caught her eyes. She had been pretending not to watch him.

"Wedding announcements," he said.

And she had smiled back at him bravely. Such was the first acknowledgment
between them that the world existed.

"A little late," he observed, smiling in his turn as he changed his pen,
"but they'll have to make allowances for the exigencies of the situation.
And they've been after me to settle down for so many years that they
ought to be thankful to get them at all. I've told them that after a
decent period they may come to Grenoble--in the late autumn. We don't
want anybody before then, do we, Honora?"

"No," she said faintly; and added, "I shall always be satisfied with you
alone, Hugh."

He laughed happily, and presently she went up on deck and stood with her
face to the breeze. There were no sounds save the musical beat of the
water against the strakes, and the low hum of wind on the towering
vibrant sails. One moulten silver star stood out above all others. To the
northward, somewhere beyond the spot where sea and sky met in the hidden
kiss of night, was Newport,--were his relations and her friends. What did
they think? He, at least, had no anxieties about the world, why should
she? Their defiance of it had been no greater than that of an hundred
others on whom it had smiled benignly. But had not the others truckled
more to its conventions? Little she cared about it, indeed, and if he had
turned the prow of the 'Adhemar' towards the unpeopled places of the
earth, her joy would have been untroubled.

One after another the days glided by, while with the sharpened senses of
a great love she watched for a sign of the thing that slept in him--of
the thing that had driven him home from his wanderings to re-create his
life. When it awoke, she would have to share him; now he was her