She was causing him pain when she wished him only joy. His thought, she knew, was all for her. She would think and act for them both. If he had sat there like a pent-up volcano for another second the hot lava would have come rushing out. She had felt it all in the air. Her heart too was so full of expectant joy that the tension was akin to pain. It was very dark, with only throbbing stars in a velvet sky and the white gleam of the foam along the beach. She did not know which way he had gone, but he would come back presently, all himself again. She sank down into the side of a hummock and waited. He came at last, slowly, heavily, with bent head. He stopped quite close to her, where the way led to the house, and stood looking out over the darkness of the sea. Then he heaved a great sigh and turned to go back to the house. "God!" she heard him mutter. "If I dared but tell her!" She rose swiftly out of her form and caught him by the arm, with something between a laugh and a cry, "Tell me, then!"--and the mighty arms of his love were round her, gripping her to him till she was squeezed almost breathless. "Avice! Avice!--and you knew! Oh, thank God for you!" "Of course I knew," she gasped. "And I want you as much as you want me." "Thank God for you, dearest!" he said deeply. "We will thank Him all our lives. He has given us with a full hand.... I have nothing left to ask Him ... except your fullest happiness, now and always." "And I yours. You are my happiness. You give me Heaven." "God requite me ten times over if ever you rue this day. I have longed for you till my heart was sick with the pain of longing----" "Foolish! Why did you not tell me before?" "I could not. Until I knew.... Placed as we are, you see, it felt like forcing you.... You might not have felt free to say no.... It might have put an end to all our comradeship...." "You don't know me. I'd have said no quickly enough if I hadn't wanted you. But I do, and you make me very happy." He led her into the house and held her there at arm's length in the firelight, as though he could hardly believe it all true, and looked deep into the dark eyes and rosy face and kissed it rosier still. And the blue and yellow and green and crimson flames danced their merriest, as these two sat hand in hand watching them, and talking softly by snatches with long sweet silences in between. LIII "I was so afraid there might be some other to whom you were bound," she said, as she lay there in the firelight, with her head against his arm and his right hand smoothing her hair, that wonderful hair which had been to him as the aureole of a saint and was more to him now than all the gold in all the world. "There is no other, my dear one. Not a soul on earth has any claim on me except that of friendship.... It was inevitable that we should both have that fear. Four months ago we did not know of one another's existence----"