“Oh, you are not going away now—not now, when we have just found out there was some mistake?” said Garde.
“I have promised to go, and therefore I must,” said Adam. “And I have to go and get that fortune now, so that I can come back and marry you, sweetheart! I must keep my promise to Captain Phipps.”
“But you won’t stay away for seven years again, will you, Adam?” inquired Garde, looking at him wistfully and candidly now, with all her love in her eyes. “If you do——” she left the sentence unfinished.
“No, I will not,” Adam assured her. “But if I remained away for fifty years, I should love you and love you still. And will you love me, dearest, as long as that?”
“Yes, I shall love you longer than that,” answered Garde. She was not impulsive now, but her manner was sweetly earnest, therefore it was more beautiful than all her other beauty. “I shall always love you now, Adam,” she added. “It seems to me as if I always had.”
William Phipps roared across the water once again.
Adam’s less tumultuous, more enduring love, came into his eyes. He thought the caress of her long look was sweeter than the kiss Garde might have given him.
“I shall have to go,” he murmured. “God bless you and keep you, sweetheart. Good-by, dear Garde.”
“Good-by, Adam,” said Garde. “I shall pray for your swift return.”
He swept her little hand to his lips for a second and then strode away.