A star fell overhead. It drew her eyes away a moment to watch its fiery curve. He felt the spell was broken. The wind shrieked with an eldritch cry, like the mocking threnody of his thwarted hope. He had a shuddering remembrance of Mad Peggy. And straightway he saw her weird figure dashing round the crag in the darkness—a shawl over her head, and a lovely face, at once radiant and frenzied, gleaming from between its dusky folds. His heart almost stopped, a superstitious thrill froze his hot blood. Never to be happy! Ah, God! never! never! To thirst and thirst, and nothing ever to quench his thirst!
Mrs. Wyndwood started forward. “Oh, there you are, Olive!”
The figure threw passionate arms round her. “Comfort me, darling; I am engaged.”
For the happier Herbert had spoken. And Olive had listened shyly, humbly, with tears, full of an exquisite uplifting emotion, akin to the exaltation of righteousness, at the thought of giving herself to this man, of living her life with and for the one true soul in the world.
They stood close to the hoary rim of the black welter; dusky figures, wind-rocked and spray-drenched, a little apart from each other, the shining house in the background.
“And when did you begin to think of me—in that way?” she faltered.
“I never thought of you in any other. But that night when Matthew arrived, when you sat nid-nodding in the grandfather’s chair, you maddened me; you were adorable! the contrast was exquisite. To think of you—a wilful little misanthrope—to think of that glorious, wayward creature fading away till she suited the chair. Oh, it was too—”
He broke off. Passion robbed him of words. He moved nearer—she drew back.
“Oh, but will you still”—she hesitated, shy of the word—”love me when I do suit the chair?”
“I shall always see you as you were then.”