ly made you stand out
the more triumphantly in contrast. It's like a Sorolla picture hung
against gray."

"We don't stand out against dull backgrounds--not for long," she
declared. "We fade into them." But after a moment she wheeled with a
sudden impulsiveness and gazed contritely into his face.

"Forgive me," she pleaded. "It's shameful and petty and mean to wreak
all my protests against you. You've been splendid. I couldn't have borne
it without you."

Stuart Farquaharson's cheeks paled under an emotion so powerful that
instead of exciting him it carried a sense of being tremendously
sobered--yet shaken and tried to the limit of endurance.

"You've forbidden me to make love to you," he said desperately, "and I'm
trying to obey, but God knows, dear, there are times when--" He broke
off with an abrupt choke in his throat.

Then Conscience said in a changed and very gentle voice, "You wouldn't
have me until I could be utterly, unmistakably sure of myself, would
you?"

"No," he replied uncompromisingly, "the very intensity of my love would
make it hell for both of us unless you loved me--that way, too--but I
wish you were certain. I wish to God you were!"

Again she turned her eyes seaward, and when she spoke her voice was
impersonal, almost dead, so that he thought, with a deep misery, she was
trying to make it merciful in tempering her verdict.

"I am certain now," she told him, still looking away.

He came a step nearer and braced himself. He could forecast her words,
he thought--deep friendship but no more!

"Your mind is--definitely--made up?"

Very abruptly she wheeled, showing him a face transformed and
self-revealing. Against her ivory white cheeks her parted lips were
crimson and her eyes dilated and softly black. "I think I've known it
from the first," she declared, and her voice thrilled joyously. "Only I
didn't know that I knew."

There was no need to ask what she knew. Her eyes were windows flung open
and back of them was the message of her heart.

"I don't know how you love me," she went on tensely, "but if you don't
love me rather madly, it's all one sided."

As his arms closed about her, he knew that he was violently shaken, but
he knew that she was trembling, too, through all the magnificent
softness and slenderness of her. He knew that the lips against which he
crushed his kisses were responsive.

Later he declared, with a ring of triumph, "I told you when you were a
little girl that