He sprang to the raft and deposited himself, radiant and dripping, by her side. They were too far at sea to be minutely observed. The roisterers on the beach could do no more than discern a couple of resting forms, a common sight in the bathing season.
"I arrived a week ago, and have been dodging you ever since," he explained.
"Mon cheri," she only said. Love's babyhood learns speech with difficulty.
"I have searched here in the morning when the soldiers parade—I have loafed up and down the St Servan Street till I know all the good people's wardrobes that hang to air—I have sneaked about the forts, and been nearly 'run in' for a spy. I almost despaired of seeing you, but now, at last, we are together."
His tone was dramatic with genuine ecstasy. Since their parting life's fruit for him seemed to have been pared and segmented with a steel knife—at this moment he felt as one who stands free to eat in a luscious raining orchard.
Leonie answered him never a word. She was speechless with stupefied satisfaction. She only laughed, looked down at her dainty sand shoes as she bobbed them in and out of the sparkling water, then, with a caressing glance at his drenched head, laughed again.
The English language sounded beautiful indeed, but her happiness found no sufficiently comprehensive outlet in that scarcely familiar tongue.
"Little one," he said, earnestly, "do you love me enough to be mine, to take me for now and always?"
She nodded only, but her beautiful blue eyes, borrowing intensity from the azure sky, seemed to answer and envelop him with an embrace of adoration.
"You must obey me; you must trust me much, very much," he explained, seriously, seeing the gaiety of her mood.