I claim you for my own."

"When that is done, Robin?" she questioned almost fearfully, as if a
sudden dread suspicion broke upon her mind. "When what is done?"

He paused a moment to choose his words, what time she stared intently
into the face that gleamed white in the surrounding gloom.

"When that poor ailing spirit is at rest." And he added: "It will be
soon."

"Thou hast said the same aforetime, Robin. Yet it has not so fallen
out."

"She has clung to life beyond what could have been believed of her
condition," he explained, unconscious of any sinister ambiguity. "But
the end, I know, is very near--a matter but of days."

"Of days!" she shivered, and moved forward to the edge of the terrace,
he keeping step beside her. Then she stood awhile in silence, looking
down at the dark oily surge of water. "You loved her once, Robin?" she
asked, in a queer, unnatural voice.

"I never loved but once," answered that perfect courtier.

"Yet you married her--men say it was a love marriage. It was a marriage,
anyway, and you can speak so calmly of her death?" Her tone was
brooding. She sought understanding that should silence her own lingering
doubt of him.

"Where lies the blame? Who made me what I am?" Again his bold arm
encompassed her. Side by side they peered down through the gloom at the
rushing waters, and he seized an image from them. "Our love is like that
seething tide," he said. "To resist it is to labour in agony awhile, and
then to perish."

"And to yield is to be swept away."

"To happiness," he cried, and reverted to his earlier prayer. "Say
that when... that afterwards, I may claim you for my own. Be true to
yourself, obey the voice of instinct, and so win to happiness."

She looked up at him, seeking to scan the handsome face in that dim
light that baffled her, and he observed the tumultuous heave of her
white breast.

"Can I trust thee, Robin? Can I trust thee? Answer me true!" she
implored him, adorably weak, entirely woman now.

"What does your own heart answer you?" quoth he, loaning close above
her.

"I think I can, Robin. And, anyway, I must. I cannot help myself. I am
but a woman, after all," she murmured, and sighed. "Be it as thou wilt.
Come to me again when thou art free."

He bent lower, murmuring incoherently, and she put up a hand to pat his
swarthy bearded cheek.

"I shall make thee greater than any man in England, so thou make me
happier than any woman."

He caught the han