beside her. They were silent a moment, his eyes fixed upon the first far sign of dawn, while hers searched the gloom for his features.

“Columbine,” he began, at length, in a[50] voice of strange softness, “it would have been better for us both if I had never come here.”

[50]

“No, no,” was her eager reply; “I cannot have you say that. You have put savor into my life that was so vapid before.”

“But a bitter savor,” he said.

“Bitter, yes,” Columbine returned in a voice which, though low and restrained, betrayed the fierceness of her excitement. “Bitter as death; but sweet too, sweet as—”

She left the sentence unfinished. Below on the shore the full tide was lapping the stones with monotonous melody. Save for their iterance, the stillness was almost as deep as the marvellous silence of a winter night which no sound of living thing breaks.

“Whatever comes,” Columbine murmured a moment later, her voice changed and softened so that he had to bend to catch her words, “I am glad of all that has happened; glad of you; glad, always glad.”

He caught her passionately in his arms and covered her downcast head with kisses, while she yielded unresistingly to his embrace, although she sobbed as if her heart would break. In the east the promise of the dawn shone steadily, increasing slowly but surely. It became at last so strong that Columbine, opening her swollen lids, was[51] able to distinguish objects a little. At that moment she became conscious that the arms of her lover had loosened their hold upon her. She looked into his face with sudden alarm. Mr. Tom had fallen into a dead faint.

[51]

VII.

The afternoon sun was shining into Tom’s chamber windows when he awoke. Ten hours of heavy sleep had had a wonderfully revigorating effect upon him, and despite some stiffness he awoke with a sense of renewed power. His repose had, too, a far more remarkable effect than this. Before his eyes were open he said aloud, as if he were solemnly summoning some culprit before the bar of an awful tribunal:—

The

“Thomas Wainwright!”

The sound of his own words acted upon him like an electric shock. He started 

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