“Do you--do you think, Ella,” he began at last huskily, “that you’d ever--care to--care to--make a fine fellow--of me?” Ella turned sharply about and faced him. “Can’t you do it for yourself?” she asked loftily. Clarence shook his head. “Now you know I can’t,” he pleaded gently. Then, as she made no answer, he looked out to sea again, and saw that the _Scheherazade_ was dwindling to a little grey point on the horizon. “Now I’ll give you till the yacht is out of sight to make up your mind,” said he. Then they both looked at the vanishing speck. The moments passed, and neither spoke, though they could hear and almost feel the beating of each other’s heart, and though each felt the silence to be desperately disconcerting. “It’s gone!” said he. “No, it isn’t!” cried she. Both were growing intensely excited. Ella opened her eyes wider and wider, and strained them to the utmost. Clarence tried to speak, but she stopped him by thrusting out her hand right in front of him, holding her breath. He looked down at it for a couple of seconds, and then ventured to take it very gently in his right hand, and to put his left on her shoulder. When he had remained in this position for a few moments, she drew a long breath, and blinked her eyes violently. “Don’t cry,” said Clarence soothingly, and he stooped and kissed her. “I haven’t answered you,” she objected, raising her shoulder pettishly. “Never mind that now. Let me comfort you, and you shall answer me by and by.” But Ella still looked persistently out to sea. “The yacht’s quite gone now,” she said in a disconsolate voice, “and with it your twenty thousand pounds. I suppose, from a strictly business point of view, I owe you some compensation.” “Well, twenty thou is twenty thou,” said Clarence, whose spirits were rising. Ella raised her hand to her chin reflectively, a little beam of mischief coming into her eyes. “On the whole,” she said at last musingly, making no further objection to the encroachments of her companion’s arm, “considering that I’m the ugly duckling of the family, perhaps I might have made a worse bargain! And to tell you the truth, Clarence,” she added presently in a gentler voice, with a touch of shyness, when he had made her seal the contract with a kiss for each thousand, “if you had gone your way and I had gone mine after the way you behaved over that yacht, I--I should have missed you awfully!” The sun was growing hot over the land and over the sea, and a dim white haze seemed to soften the line between blue sky and blue ocean, as they stood still side by side under the tower of old Maker Church, savouring of the strange sweetness of having crowned an old romance and laid the foundation of a new one with the fitting up of the yacht _Scheherazade_.