"That's enough!" he said—"For if you love me, Mary, your love is love indeed!—it's no sham; and like all true and heavenly things, it will never change. I believe, if I turned out to be an utter wastrel, you'd love me still!"
"Of course I should!" she answered.
"Of course you would!" and he kissed her again. "Mary, my Mary, if there were more women like you, there would be more men!—men in the real sense of the word—manly men, whose love and reverence for women would make them better and braver in the battle of life. Do you know, I can do anything now, with you to love me! I don't suppose,"—and here he unconsciously squared his shoulders—"I really don't suppose there is a single difficulty in my way that I won't conquer!"
She smiled, leaning against him.
"If you feel like that, I am very happy!" she said.
As she spoke, she raised her eyes to the sky, and uttered an involuntary exclamation.
"Look, look!" she cried—"How glorious!"
The heavens above them were glowing red,—forming a dome of burning rose, deepening in hue towards the sea, where the outer rim of the nearly vanished sun was slowly disappearing below the horizon—and in the centre of this ardent glory, a white cloud, shaped like a dove with outspread wings, hung almost motionless. The effect was marvellously beautiful, and Angus, full of his own joy, was more than ever conscious of the deep content of a spirit attuned to the infinite joy of nature.
"It is like the Holy Grail," he said, and, with one arm round the woman he loved, he softly quoted the lines:—
"And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail,
Rose-red, with beatings in it as if alive!"