"And all the time I have been standing here, like Patience on a monument, wishing you would come up."
"Did you want me, then?"
"When do I not want you?"
Nathalie laughed, but she also blushed. "Then you should have gone in search of me, sir. Mrs. Leroy wants to go home now, and I must go with her."
"But not just yet. I have something to say to you, Nathalie."
And so here, in the hot warmth of the red sunset, the old, old story was told—the story that has been told over and over again since the world began, and will be told until its end, and yet is ever new. The story to which two little words, yes or no, ends so ecstatically, or gives the deathblow. It was yes this time; and when Nathalie Marsh, half an hour after, went home with Mrs. Leroy, she was wondering if there was one among all those thousands—one in all the wide world—as happy as she!
The last red glimmer of the sunset had faded out of the sky, and the summer moon was up, round and white and full, before the last of the picnickers went home. And in its pale rays, with his hands in his pockets, and a cigar between his lips, Captain Cavendish went home with Cherrie Nettleby.