ed away and poured down fuller
floods of light; the air vibrated with strange, audible throbs. When he
released her, she did not move away. Never again, though they lived out
a century, could the past be quite what it had been before; through it
they had come to this, the crowning perfection of their lives. Through
the future would run the memory of a caress in which--she was not a
woman who measured her gifts--she had dissolved all the hope and promise
of that future for him. Desperation was no small element in the whirl.
Only into the eternities could he carry the _now_ pure and loyal. It had
nothing to do with time; only through the shadow of the coming death had
he attained to it.

The fancy that had always haunted him with her peculiar name and dainty
presence, prompted the 'Marguerite!'

She was not a woman to whom people give pet names. A _rested_, loving
smile gleamed over her face, and her lips sought his again.

'My darling!'

'Mine!' and then time drifted on, unbroken by the speech which would
have jarred the new, perfect harmony. Neither _thought_--the life
currents that had met so wildly and suddenly, left space in their full,
disturbed flow, for just the one consciousness of delirious, satisfying
love. While the fiery sunset paled, he held the little drenched figure
close, her warm breath flowing across his cheek.

Out of the gathering dimness shoreward, came a hail. It struck him with
an icy chill that death could never have brought. She raised her head,
listening. The longing and temptation to hold her to his breast, and
sink down through the green, curling waves, came back stronger than
ever. Only so could he hope to keep her. That inexorable future of time
reaching out to grasp him back again, would put them apart so
hopelessly. His voice was hoarse--broken up with the heart wrench.

'Marguerite, will you die here with me, or go back again to the life
that will separate us?'

She did not understand him. Why should she? Did she not love him, and he
her? and what _could_ come between them? For her a future burst suddenly
into hope with that faint call. In it lay untried, unfathomable sources
of happiness.

Another breathless kiss--this time crowded with the agony of a parting
for him--and then, as the hail came again, nearer and more distinct, the
white shawl, that still clung about her, floated in the air as a signal.

They lifted her into the rescuing boat shortly, white and breathless,
and