s behind.

Then his gaze, turning slowly, fell on something white in the shadow of
a bushy, wind-distorted fir a few feet away. He looked more closely. His
eyes gradually made out a figure in a white sweater sitting on a flat
rock, elbows on knees, chin resting in cupped palms.

He walked over. Betty's eyes were fixed on him. He stared down at her,
suddenly tongue-tied, a queer constricted feeling in his throat. She did
not speak.

"Were you sitting here when I came along?" he asked at last.

"Yes," she said. "I often come up here. I have been sitting here for
half an hour."

MacRae sat down beside her. His heart seemed to be trying to choke him.
He did not know where to begin, or how, and there was much he wanted to
say that he must say. Betty did not even take her chin out of her palms.
She stared out at the sea, rolling up to Squitty in silver windrows.

MacRae put one arm around her and drew her up close to him, and Betty
settled against him with a little sigh. Her fingers stole into his free
hand. For a minute they sat like that. Then he tilted her head back,
looked down into the gray pools of her eyes, and kissed her.

"You stood there looking down at the sea as if you were in a dream," she
whispered; "and all the time I was crying inside of me for you to come
to me. And presently, I suppose, you will go away."

"No," he said. "This time I have come for good."

"I knew you would, sometime," she murmured. "At least, I hoped you
would. I wanted you so badly."

"But because one wants a thing badly it doesn't always follow that one
gets it."

MacRae was thinking of his father when he spoke.

"I know that," Betty said. "But I knew that you wanted me, you see. And
I had faith that you would brush away the cobwebs somehow. I've been
awfully angry at you sometimes. It's horrible to feel that there is an
imaginary wall between you and some one you care for."

"There is no wall now," MacRae said.

"Was there ever one, really?"

"There seemed to be."

"And now there is none?"

"None at all."

"Sure?" she murmured.

"Honest Injun," MacRae smiled. "I went to see your father to-day about a
simple matter of business. And I found--I learned--oh, well, it doesn't
matter. I buried the hatchet. We are going to be married and live
happily ever after."

"Well," Betty said judiciously, "we shall have as good a chance as any
one, I think. Look at Norman and Dolly. I positively trembled for
them--after Norman g