helplessly at him with tears running down my cheeks, and my
lips trembling. The most awful look came into his eyes, and he went as
pale as I was red.

"My precious one, my darling!" he stammered, and dropping down on one
knee by the big log, he put his arms round me.

"Oh!" I said. And then my head was nestling down into his neck, and
instead of being wretched I was perfectly happy.

"Who has dared to make you cry?" he asked, holding me close.

"You," I answered.

"I?"

"I thought you were only being kind to me because--because you're an
American and it's your duty to a foreigner."

He laughed at that--an excited, happy laugh, with a queer break in it.

"I've been half out of my mind with love for you, ever since the first
day I saw you looking down at me in the steerage. Am I _quite_ out of
it now, or can it be true that you care for me--just a little, little
bit?"

"I care for you, _dreadfully_," said I. "Why, this isn't friendship, is
it? It's being in love."

"I should think it was--with me," he said. "It's all of me, heart, soul
and body, drowning in love."

"Don't drown," I whispered to him. "I--can't spare you."

After that we didn't say a word, but I hadn't supposed it was possible
for any human creature to feel so seraphically happy as I did. I don't
know how long a time passed before we even spoke, but it seemed only a
minute--a minute stolen straight out of heaven. And he was so handsome
and dear that I would have kept that minute forever if I could, for it
was impossible to believe that another could be so perfect.

But by and by it did merge into sister minutes, just as good, and we
began to talk and tell each other things.

He told me again how he'd loved me from the very first instant, and I
told him that after the day on the dock, if not before, I'd never quite
had him out of my thoughts for a moment.

"There has always been a sort of _undertone_ of you," I went on, "no
matter what else I was thinking of, just as Sally says, when you are
near the sea you hear it through every other sound."

He liked having me say that, and his eyes _are_ too glorious when he
likes things that I say.

"I loved you so much," he answered, "that I felt my love _must_ have
some power over your heart; it couldn't go for nothing. I knew I wasn't
worthy of you, but the love was, for no man in your own world could
offer you a greater one. That's my justification for asking you to put
your hand in mine. But