felt that she was still trembling, that she felt safe
with no one but me. Then the old steward rose up and left us, and the
servants likewise retired from the room. They saw our relations to
each other, and although it was night we were left in the room together.

Again for a time I banished my dark thoughts, for a time I allowed
love, rather than duty, to fill my world, and I yielded to the gentle
witchery of her presence. I had made up my mind to tell her all; but I
postponed it for a while. "Time enough yet," I said; "let me have some
happiness before eternal night sets in."

How gentle, how kind, how loving she was! Her every word told of the
love she bore me, and had borne me for long years, every word told me
how she believed in my goodness and purity.

What we talked of, I may not recount. I only know that for a few short
minutes we lived in the blissful present. The thought of her great
love was more powerful than the dread remorse which had possessed me a
little while before.

And was it any wonder? Think, if you can, how I must have felt! Ten
long years before I had left her, thinking she loved another, and all
those years I had roamed the world in misery and hopeless despair. I
had come back at the summons of a voice which I had heard, or thought I
had heard, sweeping across the wide seas, and when I had arrived at the
place where I had hoped to see her I had heard she was dead. Then,
after grief that amounted to madness, I had discovered her alive, and
had found that she loved me. More than that, she was with me, we were
alone, and I felt her hands in mine. Was it to be wondered at then,
that darkness should, for the time, be driven away?

Swiftly the time passed, sweetly her gentle voice sounded as she told
me how happy, how safe, how contented she was, and, in spite of her
terrible experience, how little weakness she felt; and then she asked
me to relate to her my adventure since the night on which I left the
Trewinion Manor.

Again I remembered what I had done, again the agonies of remorse, which
had been awakened by memory, began to eat into my soul. But I would
tell her all. I would faithfully relate the tale of the years that had
passed, I would faithfully tell her what I had done.

And so I cast my mind back and told her what I have written in these
pages. How I had gone away to sea, and how, for years, I had sailed in
every clime, and with men of different nationalities. I re