"You believed in me all the while," said a quiet voice.
He leaned forward, trying to see the girl's face in the gathering dusk.
"I knew," she went on quietly, "even if you didn't. You thought it your duty to weigh the evidence you had found, and to be cold and stern and unyielding. But in your heart you knew that everything was all right. You may have deceived yourself, David, but you never deceived me."
"You don't hold it against me?" he asked unsteadily. "Really, Alison, I must have believed. I couldn't have doubted—"
"Of course not," she returned. She got up from the bowlder and stood beside him. They faced each other for a moment, two shadows, dimly outlined in the purple twilight. Then, naturally and inevitably as clouds drifting together, the shadows merged, and without quite knowing how it all came about, Dexter found Alison in the circle of his one useful arm, warm and trembling and clinging, found himself holding her in a breathless, stunning embrace.
"Oh, my dear," he gasped. "Whatever I may have thought, I loved you—in spite of everything."
"I knew!" she whispered. "And I know now why it all happened as it did—why I was forced to run away to this terrible wilderness. I thought it was tragedy, and it was for this!"
She spoke incoherently, between tears and laughter, her face against his shoulder.
His hand went up, and his fingers strayed through her soft, tumbled hair. "Alison! Look at me!"
Slowly she lifted her head, but as their glances met they were startled by a loud coughing sound behind them, "I feared as much," said a gruff voice.