"I do not seek to deny it," I answered in deep, solemn earnestness, taking her small white hand in mine. "It is true, Beryl, that you are my wife--true also that I love you." "But it cannot be possible!" she gasped. "I knew that I was a wife, but never dreamed that you were actually my husband." "And how did you discover it?" "I was down by the waterside this evening, before dinner, and overheard your conversation with Mr Ashwicke." "All of it?" "Yes, all of it. I know that I am your wife;" and she sighed, while her little hand trembled within mine. "I love you, Beryl," I said, simply and earnestly. "I have known all along that you are my wife, yet I dared not tell you so, being unable to offer sufficient proof of it and unable to convince you of my affection. Yet, in these few weeks that have passed, you have surely seen that I am devoted to you--that I love you with a strange and deeper love than ever man has borne within his heart. A thousand times I have longed to tell you this, but have always feared to do so. The truth is that you are my wife--my adored." Her hand tightened upon mine, and unable to restrain her emotions further, she burst into tears. "Tell me, darling," I whispered into her car--"tell me that you will try to love me now that you know the truth. Tell me that you forgive me for keeping the secret until now, for, as I will show you, it was entirely in our mutual interests. We have both been victims of a vile and widespread conspiracy, therefore we must unite our efforts to combat the vengeance of our enemies. Tell me that you will try and love me--nay, that you do love me a little. Give me hope, darling, and let us act together as man and wife." "But it is so sudden," she faltered. "I hardly know my own feelings." "You know whether you love me, or whether you hate me," I said, placing my hand around her slim waist and drawing her towards me. "No," she responded in a low voice, "I do not hate you. How could I?" "Then you love me--you really love me, after all!" I cried joyously. For answer she burst again into a flood of tears, and I, with mad passion, covered her white brow with hot kisses while she clung to me-- my love, my wife. Ah! when I reflect upon the ecstasy of those moments--how I kissed her sweet lips, and she, in return, responded to my tender caresses, how she clung to me as though shrinking in fear from the world about her, how her heart beat quickly in unison with my own, I feel that I cannot properly convey here a sufficient sense of my wild delight. It is enough to say that in those tender moments I knew that I had won the most beautiful and graceful woman I had ever beheld--a woman who was peerless above all--and that she was already my wife. The man who reads this narrative, and whose own love has been reciprocated after long waiting, as mine has been, can alone understand the blissful happiness that came to me and the complete joy that filled my heart.