eeches, tender,
passionate and florid, and lo! to this had it all come--to these
three words, which, as my lips uttered them, made my heart leap in
awe of their crude and naked daring.

And she? The words, as though they smote her, chased for an instant
the rich blood from her cheek. For a moment the bosom heaved wildly,
then the colour came slowly back, and ebbed again. A soft tremor
shook the bending form, the little hand clutched the gown, but she
made no answer.

"Speak to me, Claire! I love you! With my life and soul I love you.
Can you not care for me?" I took the little hand. "Claire, my heart
is in your hands--do with it what you will, but speak to me. Can you
not--do you not--care for me?"

The head drooped lower yet, the warm fingers quivered within mine,
then tightened, and--

What was that whisper, that less than whisper, for which I bent my
head? Had I heard aright? Or why was it that the figure drooped
closer, and the bird's note sprang up jubilant?

"Claire!"

A moment--one tremulous, heart-shaking moment--and then her form bent
to me, abandoned, conquered; her face looked up, then sank upon my
breast; but before it sank I read upon it a tenderness and a passion
infinite, and caught in her eyes the perfect light of love.

As the glory of delight came flooding on my soul, the sun's disc
dropped, and the first cold shadow of night fell upon earth.
The blackbird uttered a broken "Amen," and was gone no man knew
whither. The golden ripple passed up the river, and vanished in a
leaden grey. One low shuddering sigh swept through the trees, then
all was dumb. I looked westward. Towards the horizon the blue of
day was fading downwards through indistinguishable zones of purple,
amethyst, and palest rose, the whole heaven arching in one perfect
rainbow of love.

But while I looked and listened to the beating of that beloved heart
girdled with my arm, there grew a something on the western sky that
well-nigh turned my own heart to marble. At first, a lightest
shadow--a mere breath upon heaven's mirror, no more. Then as I
gazed, it deepened, gathering all shadows from around the pole,
heaping, massing, wreathing them around one spot in the troubled
west--a shape that grew and threatened and still grew, until I looked
on--what?

Up from the calm sea of air rose one solitary island, black and
looming, rose and took shape and stood out--the very form and
semblance of Dead Man's Rock! Sable