the
strength I summon for the hour before me; in the defiance I fling to
your brothers. I may never have another chance. If ours were the
ordinary chances of ordinary life I should say nothing now. I should
wait; wait and give love time; time to prove itself in me--in both of
us. I _ask_ nothing. I am too new to you, life is too new--to you--for
pledges."

She flashed him a glance and then, looking up the river, said, with the
ghost of a toss: "I'm older than you think."

He ignored the revelation. "But I will say," he went on, "--for these
three days and nights have been three years to me and I feel a three
years' right to say--I love you; love you for life; am yours for life
though we never meet again. For I believe that we belong to each other
from the centre of our souls, by a fitness plain even to the eyes of
your brothers."

[Illustration: "For I believe that we belong to each other from the
centre of our souls, by a fitness plain even to the eyes of your
brothers"]

Still looking up the flood and red from brow to throat, Ramsey murmured
two or three words which she saw he did not hear. Yet he stood without
sound or look to ask what she had said, and presently repeated:

"I believe in God's sight we belong to each other."

"So do I," said Ramsey again, with clearer voice and with her brimming
eyes looking straight into his. A footfall turned her and she faced the
relieved pilot.

"Isn't this Island Thirty-three," she asked, "right here on our
starboard bow?"

"Thirty-three," assented Ned. "Alias Flour Island; but _not_ Flow-er
Island. Flour-ladened flatboats wrecked there in the days o' yo'
grandfather, Eliphalet Hayle, whose own boats they might 'a' been, only
Hayles ain't never been good at losin' boats. But his'n or not, _can_
you suspicion they wuz flow-er-ladened? Shucks! them that spell it
that-a-way air jest as bad an' no wuss than them that stick _b_ onto
Plum in Plum P'int an' pull the _y_ out o' Hayle fo' Hayle's P'int! They
jest a-airin' they ignorance. Some fellers love to air they ignorance. I
do, myself."

He gave these facts of topography in reward of the grave interest that
Hugh--elated interest that Ramsey--still seemed to take in all such
items, as well as to allow them to infer that he had not noticed them
betraying interest in anything more personal.

"Hayle's P'int--" he resumed, and when Madame Hayle and old Joy roused
and glanced around on him, while the senator and the general