making his way to her side.

Meriel looked around. Surrounded as she was, she was yet in a solitude
as vast as space. To right and left the mummied figures crouched in
hypnotised calm, oblivious of everything but themselves and their own
peril. She was alone on the great deck,--alone, but for that other
figure, climbing step by step to her side.

The early light shone on him as he came, lighting up his figure with an
unearthly distinctness. She saw the grey streaks in the dark hair, the
furrows which sorrow had carved upon his brow, yet despite them all
there was about the whole figure an air of youth, an alertness and
confidence of bearing, which she had never before beheld. He bore
himself like a freed man, from whose limbs the fetters have fallen.

Another moment and he was beside her, crouched on the deck with his face
close to her own. The freed look was in his eyes.

"She is still sleeping," he said; "she will not wake. It is better so.
I can do no more for her. And so--at last!--I can come to you."

"Yes," assented Meriel breathlessly. There was more to come, she read
it in his face, in the thrilling tone of his voice. She waited, her
being strung with an agony of longing.

"There are only a few minutes left, and we have waited so long! We must
not waste them now that they are here... Come to me, Meriel!"

He held out his arms and she swayed into them; his lips were on hers;
they clung together with the stored-up passion of years. For a minute
the communion of touch brought a fullness of joy, then the craving arose
to hear the wonder put into words.

"You love me? It is true? Oh, Geoffrey--how long?"

"Since the moment we met. How could I help it? It was inevitable. We
belong!" He held her face between his hands, bending so close that she
could feel his breath on her cheek. "You have been my star and my sun;
sunshine of noon; light in the darkness. You have been comfort and
rest; deliverance from despair. You have been my love, and my queen,
and my inspiration; the one beautiful strong thing that stood fast among
the ruins. Everything that a woman could be to a man you have been to
me for four long years!"

"Thank God!" she sobbed. "Oh, thank God! It is worth it all to hear
you say that. But, oh, Geoffrey, there were times--so many times! when
I would have given my life a hundred times over to have lain like this,
to have felt your arms. It was hard to struggle on, fighting on