CHAPTER XLI.
"Love is strong as death. Many waters can not quench love, neither can floods drown it."—The Proverbs of Solomon.
The war was over at last; peace was declared. The last review had been held, and the last volunteer had gone home.
Two persons were standing on the old observatory floor, at the highest point of the island, looking at the little village below, the sparkling Straits, and the blue line of land in the distant north. At least Anne was looking at them. But her lover was looking at her.
"It is enough to repay even the long silence of those long years," he said.
And others might have agreed with him. For it was a woman exquisitely and richly beautiful whom he held in his arms, whose tremulous lips he kissed at his pleasure, until, forgetting the landscape, she turned to him with a clinging movement, and hid her face upon his breast. Her heart, her life, her being, were all his, and he knew it. She loved him intensely.
"Something may be allowed to a starved man," he had said, the first time they were alone together after his arrival, his eyes dwelling fondly on her sweet face. "Do not be careful any more, Anne; show me that you love me. I have suffered, suffered, suffered, since those old days at Caryl's."
On this June afternoon they lingered on the height until the sun sank low in the west.
"We must go, Ward."