“I have it all yet to conquer,” he told her, half laughing.
“Your greatest conquest has been made.”
He reached for her hand, pressed it, and held it.
“Guy,” she said, suddenly, “will you marry me?”
She felt his hand tremble. The tremendous tide within her swept on, and in her ears there was a noise like singing. She felt his arm about her, and it was needed. She made out his voice, saying: “Mermaid, will you have me? Will you—have—me? Oh, if you will!”
It was a cry of entreaty, a prayer, a thanksgiving.
She suddenly slipped down onto the sand and quite ridiculously collapsed in a heap. And he was on the sand beside her, folding her to him, murmuring little words that were inaudible and precious. She felt his hair against her cheek and for an instant their strange eyes confronted each other. In his were brown and golden lights; hers were less brilliantly blue, as if the surface reflection were gone, and looking into them it would be possible, almost for the first time, to guess at the depths concealed by their mirror-like quality.
They sat there for a long time while the sun declined slowly through the heavens, a futile effort of the wheeling universe to measure by cycles and hours a moment of eternity.
X
The death of “Mrs. Vanton”—no one ever was heartless enough to call her anything else—left entirely to Guy the moderate fortune which had been Captain Vanton’s. And now he had a use for it.