"I fear the time is come, Nancy, when the search must be given up."
He utters the fateful words very quietly, very gently, but even so she feels a pang of startled fear. Does that mean—yes, of course it must mean, that Gerald is going away, back to America?
A feeling of dreadful desolation fills her heart. "Yes," she says in a low tone, "I think you are right. I think the search should be given up."
She would like to utter words of thanks, the conventional words of gratitude she has uttered innumerable times in the last two years—but now they stick in her throat.
Tears smart into her eyes, stifled sobs burst from her lips.
And Gerald again misunderstands—misunderstands her tears, the sobs which tear and shake her slender body. But he is only too familiar with the feeling which now grips him—the feeling that he must rush forward and take her in his arms. It has never gripped him quite as strongly as it does now; and so he steps abruptly back, and puts more of the stone rim of the fountain between himself and that forlorn little figure.
"Nancy?" he cries. "I was a brute to say that. Of course I will go on! Of course we won't give up hope! It's natural that I should sometimes become disheartened."
He is telling himself resolutely that never, never will he propose to her the plan his father revealed to him last night. How little either his father or Mr. Stephens had understood the relation between himself and Nancy if they supposed that he, of all men, could make to her such a suggestion.
And then he suddenly sees in Nancy's sensitive face, in her large blue eyes that unconscious beckoning, calling look every lover longs to see in the face of his beloved….
They each instinctively move towards the other, and in a flash Nancy is in his arms and he is holding her strained to his heart, while his lips seek, find, cling to her sweet, tremulous mouth.