Great, dark waves, with strange lights flashing through them, whirled blinding deluges high above their heads, as he held her close. With the instinct of the weaker toward the stronger, she grasped and clung to him; and the fierce exultation that thrilled through his veins with actual contact, made him strong as a giant. And then, close on the gale, came the rain, beating down the waves with its heavy pour. In the thunder and tramp of the storm no human voice could have made itself audible, if speech had been needed. The storm passed as suddenly as it had risen. Through a rift in the clouds a dash of blood-red light burst over the troubled waters, and with it a sudden quiet fell about them. They were to have their 'grand sunset' finally. 'We are too far from the mainland to reach it without help; no boats are likely to pass this way after this storm; the tide is at its lowest now; it rises high over this ledge.' In his quiet voice a half-savage triumph made itself heard. This near-coming fate, that he believed inevitable, put away completely all claims of that world that lay behind him--shut out everything but their own individuality. Time had narrowed to a point; all landmarks were swept away. Miss Berkeley's face had lost none of its whiteness; but the pallor was not of fear. The great eyes burned star-like, and the mouth was like iron. She looked up as his even tones fell on her ear. Something in his gaze fixed hers; through fearless, unveiled eyes, the soul looked straight out to his. What he saw there dazzled and blinded him. He caught her up to his heart suddenly and fiercely. His lips crushed hers in a long, clinging kiss, that seemed to drink up her very life. For them, the brightness that for others is dissipated over long years of the future, was concentrated into the single intense moment of the present--this one moment, that seemed to burst into bud and blossom, the fruition of a lifetime. The sky lifted away and poured down fuller floods of light; the air vibrated with strange, audible throbs. When he released her, she did not move away. Never again, though they lived out a century, could the past be quite what it had been before; through it they had come to this, the crowning perfection of their lives. Through the future would run the memory of a caress in which--she was not a woman who measured her gifts--she had dissolved all the hope and promise of that future for him. Desperation was no small element in the whirl. Only into the eternities could he carry the _now_ pure and loyal. It had nothing to do with time; only through the shadow of the coming death had he attained to it. The fancy that had always haunted him with her peculiar name and dainty presence, prompted the 'Marguerite!' She was not a woman to whom people give pet names. A _rested_, loving smile gleamed over her face, and her lips sought his again. 'My darling!'