"George,—we each must fight this out alone. Come back to me in the morning. I shall be waiting for you then."
And I left her.
But it seemed to me as if the morning would never come.
Unable to bear the burden of my thoughts longer amid the confines of my rooms, I went out at last into the moonlight, to wait the coming of the dawn.
As I stood out on the cliffs,—where old Jake Meaghan so often used to sit listening to Mary's music,—she came to me; fairylike, white-robed, all tenderness, all softness and palpitating womanliness.
"George,—my George," she whispered, "I could not wait till morning either.—And why should we wait, when my father's and your father's pledge, the vow they made for you and for me,—although we have not known it till now,—need not be broken after all."
I caught her up and kissed her lips, her eyes, her hair,—again and again,—until she gasped, thinking I should never cease.
With our arms around each other, we waited on the cliffs for the sunrise. We watched it come up in all its rosy loveliness, paling the dying moon and setting the waters of the Bay ablaze.
"And we must leave all this, my Lady Rosemary?" I said, with a sigh of regret.
"For a time,—yes! But not altogether, George; not always; for the little bungalow behind us is mine now,—ours; a gift last Christmas to me from my father's dear American friend, my friend, Colonel Sol Dorry, with whom, in Wyoming, I spent the happiest of all my girlhood days."