but the silence that fell between them was the
silence of that intimacy which only those who have stood together before
the great threshold of death can know. Many minutes passed before Evelyn
spoke again, and then her words came slowly, with hesitation.

"You knew?" she said. "You knew that we were safe?"

"Yes," he answered quietly; "I knew. God doesn't give with one hand and
take away with the other. Have you never noticed that?"

"I don't know," she answered with a sharp sigh. "He has never given me
anything very valuable."

"Quite sure?" said Cheveril, and she caught the old quizzical note in
his voice.

She did not reply. She was trying to understand him in the darkness, and
she found it a difficult matter.

There followed a long, long silence. The roar of the breaking seas had
become remote and vague.

But the moonlight was growing brighter. The dark cave was no longer a
place of horror.

"Shall we go?" Evelyn suggested at last.

He peered downwards.

"I think we might," he said. "No doubt your people will be very anxious
about you."

They climbed down with difficulty, till they finally stood together on
the wet stones.

And there Cheveril reached out a hand and detained the girl beside him.

"That other fellow?" he said, in his quiet, half-humorous voice. "You
didn't tell me his name."

"Oh, please!" she said tremulously.

He took her hands gently into his, and stood facing her. The moonlight
was full in his eyes. They shone with a strange intensity.

"Do you remember," he said, "how I once said to you that I was romantic
enough to like to see a love affair go the right way?"

She did not answer him. She was trembling in his hold.

He waited for a few seconds; then spoke, still kindly, but with a force
that in a measure compelled her:

"That is why I want you to tell me his name."

She turned her face aside.

"I--I can't!" she said piteously.

"Then I hold you to your engagement," said Lester Cheveril, with quiet
determination.

Her hands leapt in his. She threw him a quick uncertain glance.

"You can't mean that!" she said.

"I do mean it," he rejoined resolutely.

"But--but--" she faltered. "You don't really want to marry me? You
can't!"

He looked grimly at her for a moment. Then abruptly he broke into a
laugh that rang and echoed exultantly in the deep shadows behind them.

"I want it more than anything else on earth," he said. "Does that
satisfy you?"

His face was c