ng was borne to him,
a great lingering roar made and augmented by a million little
whispers.--The Old Roke himself, taking toll at the edge of his
dominions.

Nothing could approach the lonely terror of that utterance. He ran
forward and threw himself on his knees at the very brink of that cracked
and mauled sea cliff.

It was true that Peter, in his absence, had disembarked a second time on
Meteor--a fit habitation for such a woman as Day Rackby. But did that
old madman think that he could coop her up here forever? How far must he
be taken seriously in his threat?

Peter advanced gingerly. Blue water heaved eternally all round that
craggy island, clucked and jabbered in long corridors of faulted stone,
while in its lacy edge winked and sparkled new shells of peacock blue,
coming from the infinite treasury of the sea to join those already on
deposit here.

What, then, was he about? He loved her. What was love? What, in this
case, but an early and late sweetness, a wordless gift, a silent form
floating soft by his side--something seeking and not saying, hoping and
not proving, burning and as yet scarce daring--and so, perhaps, dying.

Then he saw her.

She lay in an angle of the cover, habited in that swimming suit she had
plagued Jethro into buying, for she could swim like a dog. There, for
minutes or hours, she had lain prone upon the sands, nostrils wide, legs
and arms covered with grains of sand in black and gold glints. Staring
at the transfigured flesh, she delighted in this conversion of herself
into a beautiful monster.--

Suddenly the sea spoke in her blood, as the gossips had long prophesied,
or something very like it. Lying with her golden head in her arms, the
splendid shoulders lax, she felt a strong impulse toward the water shoot
through her form from head to heel at this wet contact with the naked
earth. She felt that she could vanish in the tide and swim forever.

At that moment she heard Peter's step, and sprang to her feet. She could
not be mistaken. Marvelous man, in whose arms she had lain; fatal
trespasser, whom her father had sworn to kill for some vileness in his
nature. What could that be? Surely, there was no other man like Peter.
She interpreted his motions no less eagerly than his lips.

The sun sank while they stared at each other. Flakes of purple darkness
seemed to scale away from the side of the crag whose crest still glowed
faintly red. It would be night here shortly. Deep-water