the tables.

"Find me when you can get away," said Eileen, looking once more at
Selwyn; "Nina is signalling me now."

Again, as of old, her outstretched hand--the little formality
symbolising to him the importance of all that concerned them. He touched
it.

"_A bientot_," she said.

"On the lawn out there--farther out, in the starlight," he
whispered--his voice broke--"my darling--"

She bent her head, passing slowly before him, turned, looked back, her
answer in her eyes, her lips, in every limb, every line and contour of
her, as she stood a moment, looking back.

Austin and Boots were talking volubly when he returned to the tables now
veiled in a fine haze of aromatic smoke. Gerald stuck close to him,
happy, excited, shy by turns. Others came up on every side--young,
frank, confident fellows, nice in bearing, of good speech and manner.

And outside waited their pretty partners of the younger set, gossiping
in hall, on stairs and veranda in garrulous bevies, all filmy silks and
laces and bright-eyed expectancy.

The long windows were open to the veranda; Selwyn, with his arm through
Gerald's, walked to the railing and looked out across the fragrant
starlit waste. And very far away they heard the sea intoning the hymn of
the four winds.

Then the elder man withdrew his arm and stood apart for a while. A
little later he descended to the lawn, crossed it, and walked straight
out into the waste.

The song of the sea was rising now. In the strange little forest below,
deep among the trees, elfin lights broke out across the unseen Brier
water, then vanished.

He halted to listen; he looked long and steadily into the darkness
around him. Suddenly he saw her--a pale blur in the dusk.

"Eileen?"

"Is it you, Philip?"

She stood waiting as he came up through the purple gloom of the
moorland, the stars' brilliancy silvering her--waiting--yielding in
pallid silence to his arms, crushed in them, looking into his eyes,
dumb, wordless.

Then slowly the pale sacrament changed as the wild-rose tint crept into
her face; her arms clung to his shoulders, higher, tightened around his
neck. And from her lips she gave into his keeping soul and body,
guiltless as God gave it, to have and to hold beyond such incidents as
death and the eternity that no man clings to save in the arms of such as
she.

THE END

THE LEADING NOVEL OF TODAY.

* * * * *

The Fighting Chance.

By ROB