xclaimed.

She did not try to move. She only gazed at him.

"Nobody else _has_ me--at all," she answered. "No one wants me."

The colour ran up under his fine skin.

"What I mean is a little different. Perhaps you mayn't understand it. I
want this--our being together in this way--our understanding and
talking--to be something that belongs to _us_ and to no one else. It's
too sudden and wonderful for any one but ourselves to understand. Nobody
else _could_ understand it. Perhaps we don't ourselves--quite! But I
know what it does to _me_. I can't bear the thought of other people
spoiling the beauty of it by talking it over and looking on." He
actually got up and began to walk about. "Oh, I _ought_ to have
something of my own--before it's all over--I ought! I want this miracle
of a thing--for my own."

He stopped and stood before her.

"My mother is the most beloved creature in the world. I have always told
her everything. She has always cared. I don't know why I have not told
her about--this--but I haven't and I don't want to--now. That is part of
the strange thing. I do not want to tell her--even the belovedest woman
that ever lived. I want it for myself. Will you let me have it--will you
help me to keep it?"

"Like a secret?" said Robin in her soft note.

"No, not a secret. A sort of sacred, heavenly unbelievable thing we own
together."

"I understand," was Robin's answer. "It does not seem strange to me. I
have thought something like that too--almost exactly like."

It did not once occur to them to express, even to themselves, in any
common mental form the fact that they were "in love" with each other.
The tide which swept them with it had risen ages before and bore them on
its swelling waves as though they were leaves.

"No one but ourselves will know that we meet," she went on further. "I
may come and go as I like in these hurried busy hours. Even Lady Kathryn
is as free as if she were a shop girl. It is as you said before--there
is no time to be curious and ask questions. And even Dowie has been
obliged to go to her cousin's widow whose husband has just been killed."

Shaken, thrilled, exalted, Donal sat down again and talked to her.
Together they made their plans for meeting, as they had done when
Andrews had slackened her guard. There was no guard to keep watch on
them now. And the tide rose hour by hour.

CHAPTER VI

Aunts and cousins and more or less able relatives were largely drawn o