He went back, therefore, towards the east end of the house, so that the trees might hide him from the curious eyes within. In a few minutes Mr. Bradfield heard the creaking of the gate again. He got up and looked out; but Chris had gone through like an arrow, and he saw no one. When she was once outside the gates, however, shyness, excitement, one does not know what, stayed her flying feet, and brought a flutter to her heart. And when she caught sight of Dick, as he came round the angle of the wall to meet her, she stopped altogether. Dick was timid too. It seemed to him, as it seemed to her, that the happiness at their lips was too great, that the cup must be dashed away before the draught was taken. The man, of course, recovered first from the stupor of joy following weeks of longing. Chris, with her eyes upon the ground, felt a hand on her shoulder, warm breath upon her face. “You are glad to see me? Then tell me so.” She looked up suddenly, saw, in place of the wistful face she remembered, eyes full of the fire of recovered light, of youth renewed. Her lover was no longer the deaf and dumb recluse; he was as other men are, but with a charm of gentleness, of sadness past, but remembered, which made him infinitely more attractive in her eyes than any other man could ever be. “I am so glad,” she whispered, “that I hardly dare to speak for fear I should cry!” And, with a sob she tried hard to suppress, she brought out from under her cloak, and held out towards him, the little sketch of the sea seen between the trees of Wyngham House. “When I saw this,” she said, brokenly, “I knew, oh, I knew that you were alive. But you might have let me know before. For I have been so miserable, I wanted to die.” Her lover took her in his arms; they were under the trees on one side, and in the shelter of the high wall of Wyngham House on the other; and in words a little old-fashioned, a little more fanciful than the modern lover of every day dares to use, he told her of the light which the sight of her from his prison windows had brought into his life, of the new energy she had unconsciously put into him, of the longing he had felt to stand beside her and to feel the touch of her hand.