t last! Never, never
shall he depart but with Leonie!"

As she declaimed, a man's head appeared above the arch of the waves, and
on the instant they recognised each other.

He sprang to the raft and deposited himself, radiant and dripping, by
her side. They were too far at sea to be minutely observed. The
roisterers on the beach could do no more than discern a couple of
resting forms, a common sight in the bathing season.

"I arrived a week ago, and have been dodging you ever since," he
explained.

"_Mon cheri_," she only said. Love's babyhood learns speech with
difficulty.

"I have searched here in the morning when the soldiers parade--I have
loafed up and down the St Servan Street till I know all the good
people's wardrobes that hang to air--I have sneaked about the forts, and
been nearly 'run in' for a spy. I almost despaired of seeing you, but
now, at last, we are together."

His tone was dramatic with genuine ecstasy. Since their parting life's
fruit for him seemed to have been pared and segmented with a steel
knife--at this moment he felt as one who stands free to eat in a
luscious raining orchard.

Leonie answered him never a word. She was speechless with stupefied
satisfaction. She only laughed, looked down at her dainty sand shoes as
she bobbed them in and out of the sparkling water, then, with a
caressing glance at his drenched head, laughed again.

The English language sounded beautiful indeed, but her happiness found
no sufficiently comprehensive outlet in that scarcely familiar tongue.

"Little one," he said, earnestly, "do you love me enough to be mine, to
take me for now and always?"

She nodded only, but her beautiful blue eyes, borrowing intensity from
the azure sky, seemed to answer and envelop him with an embrace of
adoration.

"You must obey me; you must trust me much, very much," he explained,
seriously, seeing the gaiety of her mood.

"To obey--to trust? Of course! Is not all enclosed in love? Have I not
said, 'I love you?'"

"Enough to leave everyone, to come----"

"How? Valentine?" she cried, with a sudden look of terror; "she
waits----"

"To-day," he admitted, "but to-morrow? You will be here in the same
place?" He leapt up and knelt imploringly on the dancing planks.

"Yes," she whispered.

"And from that hour you will give yourself to me?" he insisted.

"To you I gave myself a year ago," she said, with solemnity, her candid
Breton eyes beaming like a bluer heaven upon