Keith thought of his father and of how steadily that old man had held to his ideals through everything. "I have not realized them," he said firmly. "I fear I have lost most of them. I set out in life with high ideals, which I got from my father; but, somehow, I seem to have changed them."
She shook her head, with a pleasant light in her eyes.
"I do not think you have. Do you remember what you said to me once about your ideal?"
He turned and faced her. There was an expression of such softness and such sweetness in her face that a kind of anticipatory happiness fell on him.
"Yes; and I have always been in love with that ideal," he said gravely.
She said gently: "Yes, I knew it."
"Did you?" asked Keith, in some surprise. "I scarcely knew it myself, though I believe I have been for some time."
"Yes?" she said. "I knew that too."
Keith bent over her and took both her hands in his. "I love and want love in return--more than I can ever tell you."
A change came over her face, and she drew in her breath suddenly, glanced at him for a second, and then looked away, her eyes resting at last on the distance where a ship lay, her sails hanging idly in the dim haze. It might have been a dream-ship. At Keith's words a picture came to her out of the past. A young man was seated on the ground, with a fresh-budding bush behind him. Spring was all about them. He was young and slender and sun-browned, with deep-burning eyes and close-drawn mouth, with the future before him; whatever befell, with the hope and the courage to conquer. He had conquered, as he then said he would to the young girl seated beside him.