'Lookee here, Stella,' he burst out suddenly. 'I am going to run away with you. You will be cross at first, but you will get over it. You know you looked as if you could not speak with passion when I held you that night and asked that I might kiss you. But when we met, you never once thought of bringing it up against me; now did you?'

'No.'

'Oh, good Lord! Stella, why do you keep me on and on hoping, and nothing come of it? Put an end to it. You want to get away; you need a complete change; anyone can see that. You said in July you sometimes thought of marrying me. Yes—no—yes. There it is in the horses' hoofs. Summer, autumn, winter, spring—spring. It is spring now. We won't have the smallest morsel of fuss. If we were married to-morrow, everyone would say: "Well, goodness knows, they've been long enough thinking over it." Let's put an end to it, Stella. Hear the horses' hoofs, every one of them saying "Yes, yes—yes!" Stella, will you marry me?'

There was a long pause. The sound of a railway whistle in the distance, of snowy-breasted sea-gulls calling as they skimmed the waves, the deep, solemn crescendo of the wide sea as it broke on the shining sand, the merry cries of children on the shore—these came borne to them on the balmy spring air. Memories that had a pang beyond the bitterness of death surged up in Stella's mind. To the smallest detail, the hour in which she had listened in speechless happiness to Anselm Langdale's avowal of love rose up before her. An hour so near in time—but in the sensations that turn hours into years remote as the first dawn of consciousness.

'Answer me, Stella,' said Ritchie, his voice now low and husky with contending emotion. 'Don't you know what to say? It's very simple—say "Yes."'

Again there was a long pause.

'Yes,' she answered at last, and Ritchie turned quite pale through the ruddy bronze of his cheeks. For a moment he almost reeled in his saddle and doubted his senses.

'Stella, do you mean it? You will be my wife?'

'Yes,' she said, again looking into his face. He was agitated almost to tears, while she was perfectly calm.

They rode on for a little time in silence. Something like rest stole over Stella. She felt that her course was now fixed, her decision unalterable—and there was relief in the thought. As for Ritchie, he almost feared to give complete credence to the belief that after all these years of unavailing hope—of waiting and rejection—he was in truth an accepted lover. And even he, 'elementary human being' though he might be in one of Stella's old phrases, yet experienced that quick revulsion which so often sets in, of dread because of other possibilities, now that this ardently longed-for happiness seemed within reach. But as the first tumult of thought subsided, his joy rose high.