"I am suah yo' ah, my daughteh," the Major answered, very huskily.
She kissed him again, holding him tight in her arms. Then she unclasped her arms with a sudden quick energy and swiftly left the room.
She led Maltham silently to the boat, and silently—when she had cast off the mooring—motioned to him to enter it. He found this silence ominous, and tried to break it. But the commonplace words which he wanted to speak would not come.
And then, as he sat in the stern and mechanically steadied the tiller while she hoisted the sail, the queer feeling again came over him that it still was that wonderful first day. This feeling grew stronger as all that he remembered so well was repeated: Ulrica's rapid movement aft to the tiller; his own shifting of his seat; her quick loosing of the centreboard as the wind caught them; and then the heeling over of the boat, and her steady motion, and the bubbling hiss of the water beneath the bow. It all so lulled him, so numbed his sense of time and fact, that suddenly he looked up in her face and smiled—just as he had done on that first day.
"'I HAVE LOVED YOU WITH MY WHOLE HEART'"
But the look in Ulrica's eyes killed his smile, and brought him back with a sharp wrench to reality. Her eyes no longer were dull. They were glowing—and they seemed to cut into him like knives.
"Well," she asked, "have you anything to say for yourself?"
"No," he answered, "except that fate has been too strong for me."
"Fate sometimes is held accountable for a great deal," she said dryly, but with a catch in her voice.