Wat Gordon laughed a low, secure, satisfied laugh deep down in his throat. He had forgotten the watchful woman at the door, the waking enemies without, the coming dawn swiftly striding towards Suliscanna from the east, the long, dangerous passage of the sea-cavern, the perils innumerable that lay about them both. He loved, and he held his love all securely in his arms. She questioned of his love, and he felt that he could answer her.
"My love," he whispered, "I love you so that all things—life, death, eternity—are the same to me. Nothing weighs in the scale when set to balance you. I loved you, Kate, when I thought you must hate me for my folly and wickedness. How shall I love you now, when your sweetest words of this night are writ in fire on my heart? But all is one—I love you, and I love you, and I love you!"
The girl sighed the satisfied sigh of one who listens to that which she desires to hear and knows that she will hear, yet who for very love's sake must needs hear it again and yet again.
And her arms also went tremblingly about him, and they twain that had been sundered so long, kissed their first kiss—the kiss of surrender that comes but once, and then only to the pure and worthy. The dewy warmth and fragrance of her lips, the heady rapture of the unexpected meeting so thrilled his heart and dominated his senses that broad day might well have stolen upon them and found the lovers so, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot."
But the voice of Bess Landsborough from the doorway caused them to start suddenly apart with a shock of loss like the snapping of a limb. Yet it was a kindly voice, and one full of infinite sympathy for those who, like Wat and Kate, were ready to count all things well lost for love.
"My lad," she said, gently, "ye maun e'en be tramping. In an hour or so the sun will be keekin' ower the hills of the east, and gin ye tarry your lass will mourn a lover. There are more days than one, and nights longer than this short one of summer. Trust your love to me. Bess Landsborough chose a strange way of love hersel', but she keeps a kindly heart for young folk, and you twa silly bairnies shall not lippen to her in vain. Come your ways, lad."
And Wat would have gone at her word. For the hope of the future had possession of him, and, besides, his head was dazed and moidered with the first taste of love's sweetness.
But the girl raised herself a little and held out her arms.
"Bid me good-night just this once," she said, "and tell me again that you love me."
So Wat took his sweetheart in his arms. There seemed no words that he could say which would express the thoughts of his heart at that moment.