She looked up at him with her old wide-eyed steadfastness and replied: "You are a good man, Ranulph." He stood gazing at her a moment without remark, then he said: "No, ba su, no! but it's like you to say I am." Then he added suddenly: "I've told you the whole truth about myself and about my father. He did a bad thing, and I've stood by him. At first, I nursed my troubles and my shame. I used to think I couldn't live it out, that I had no right to any happiness. But I've changed my mind about that-oui-gia! As I hammered away at my ships month in month out, year in year out, the truth came home to me at last. What right had I to sit down and brood over my miseries? I didn't love my father, but I've done wrong for him, and I've stuck to him. Well, I did love--and I do love--some one else, and I should only be doing right to tell her, and to ask her to let me stand with her against the world." He was looking down at her with all his story in his face. She put out her hand quickly as if in protest and said: "Ranulph--ah no, Ranulph--" "But yes, Guida," he replied with stubborn tenderness, "it is you I mean --it is you I've always meant. You have always been a hundred times more to me than my father, but I let you fight your fight alone. I've waked up now to my mistake. But I tell you true that though I love you better than anything in the world, if things had gone well with you I'd never have come to you. I never came, because of my father, and I'd never have come because you are too far above me always--too fine, too noble for me. I only come now because we're both apart from the world and lonely beyond telling; because we need each other. I have just one thing to say: that we two should stand together. There's none ever can be so near as those that have had hard troubles, that have had bitter wrongs. And when there's love too, what can break the bond! You and I are apart from the world, a black loneliness no one understands. Let us be lonely no longer. Let us live our lives together. What shall we care for the rest of the world if we know we mean to do good and no wrong? So I've come to ask you to let me care for you and the child, to ask you to make my home your home. My father hasn't long to live, and when he is gone we could leave this island for ever. Will you come, Guida?" She had never taken her eyes from his face, and as his story grew her face lighted with emotion, the glow of a moment's content, of a fleeting joy. In spite of all, this man loved her, he wanted to marry her--in spite of all. Glad to know that such men lived--and with how dark memories contrasting with this bright experience-she said to him once again: "You are a good man, Ranulph." Coming near to her, he said in a voice husky with feeling: "Will you be my wife, Guida?" She stood up, one hand resting on the arm of the great chair, the other half held out in pitying deprecation.