He turned, looking up into the flushed young face and drew it closer till their cheeks touched.
"Don't look at me! Why do you let me drift like this? It is madness—to give up to each other the way we do—"
"I wish we could give up the world for each other."
"I wish so too. I would—except for the others. Do you suppose I'd hesitate if it were not for them?"
They looked at each other with a new and subtler audacity.
"You see," she said with a wistful smile, "this is not Shiela Cardross who sits here smiling into those brown eyes of yours. I think I died before you ever saw me; and out of the sea and the mist that day some changeling crept into your boat for your soul's undoing. Do you remember in Ingoldsby—'The cidevant daughter of the old Plantagenet line '?"
They laughed like children.
"Do you think our love-tempted souls are in any peril?" he asked lightly.
The question arrested her mirth so suddenly that he thought she must have misunderstood.
"What is it, Shiela?" he inquired, surprised.