Betty burst out into loud weeping at his words. “Stop that noise, girl,” said Geoffrey, turning his pale face towards her. “Go back to the Vicarage, and if Mr. Granger comes home before I get back, tell him what we fear. Edward, send some men to search the shore towards Coed, and some more in a sailing boat. I will walk towards the Bell Rock—you can follow me.” He started and swiftly tramped along the sands, searching the sea with his eye. On he walked sullenly, desperately striving to hope against hope. On, past the Dog Rocks, round the long curve of beach till he came to the Amphitheatre. The tide was high again; he could barely pass the projecting point. He was round it, and his heart stood still. For there, bottom upwards, and gently swaying to and fro as the spent waves rocked it, was Beatrice’s canoe. Sadly, hopelessly, heavily, Geoffrey waded knee deep into the water, and catching the bow of the canoe, dragged it ashore. There was, or appeared to be, nothing in it; of course he could not expect anything else. Its occupant had sunk and been carried out to sea by the ebb, whereas the canoe had drifted back to shore with the morning tide. He reared it upon its end to let the water drain out of it, and from the hollow of the bow arch something came rolling down, something bright and heavy, followed by a brown object. Hastily he lowered the canoe again, and picked up the bright trinket. It was his own ring come back to him—the Roman ring he had given Beatrice, and which she told him in the letter she would wear in her hour of death. He touched it with his lips and placed it back upon his hand, this token from the beloved dead, vowing that it should never leave his hand in life, and that after death it should be buried on him. And so it will be, perhaps to be dug up again thousands of years hence, and once more to play a part in the romance of unborn ages. _Ave atque vale_—that was the inscription rudely cut within its round. Greeting and farewell—her own last words to him. Oh, Beatrice, Beatrice! to you also _ave atque vale_. You could not have sent a fitter message. Greeting and farewell! Did it not sum it all? Within the circle of this little ring was writ the epitome of human life: here were the beginning and the end of Love and Hate, of Hope and Fear, of Joy and Sorrow. Beatrice, hail! Beatrice, farewell! till perchance a Spirit rushing earthward shall cry “_Greeting_,” in another tongue, and Death, descending to his own place, shaking from his wings the dew of tears, shall answer “_Farewell to me and Night, ye Children of Eternal Day!_” And what was this other relic? He lifted it—it was Beatrice’s tennis shoe, washed from her foot—Geoffrey knew it, for once he had tied it.