“Listen,” said Elliott. “You wouldn’t let me say this when you were poor; perhaps you’ll hear it now when you are rich. I was going to give up every cent of my share of the gold to try to please you—to do what you thought was square. I’d have given up the whole ship-load—no, that’s absurdly small, for there simply isn’t anything in the world, past, present, or future, that I wouldn’t give up and call it a good bargain if it would make you care for me a little. The best time I ever had was when I was luckily able to help you, and now I could almost find it in my heart to be sorry that you have all you need, and don’t need me any more.”
She touched his arm ever so gently, and he turned and looked squarely at her.
“Not need you!—you!” was all she said.
The sudden throb of his heart made him gasp. The deck was full of people, but he put his hand hard down upon hers as it lay on the rail, and he felt her fingers curl up into his palm.
“Be careful,” said she, with a new, subtle thrill in her voice. “Oh, look!”
From the clearing sky astern the moon was now pouring a full, glorious flood upon the heaving Atlantic, where the heavy swell ran in ivory-crested combers. In the pure white light the foam glittered with prismatic colours, wave after wave, like a long broken rainbow fallen upon the sea, and sparkling with the streaks of phosphorescence of the steamer’s wake.
“The rainbow road,” as Henninger calls it; “the treasure trail,” said Elliott. “The trail’s ended.”
But Margaret shook her head. “No,” she said. “The rainbow road has just begun.”
THE END.