When a woman admits that she may come to like a man in time, she means that she already loves him, but is not quite ready for marriage. It was a more dangerous footing, their intimacy on these terms, than if their troth had been fairly plighted. The man sought persistently to win new concessions, to force further confessions; the woman, having made the one admission, could but half resist. It brought about a new declaration of his passion every day; pale, she listened to the torrent of his words, now faintly chiding, now looking vacantly out to sea. The worn voices of the ocean gave might and earnestness to his pleading, and filled, with its own grave majesty, his broken pauses. Her hand would grow cold as it lay between his own, and she sat silent; until, with a start of self-reproach, she would regain her knowledge of the present and make him lead her back among the streets and houses. Vane went occasionally, for a few days, to the city, to look after the affairs of his bank. The closing of his contract with Welsh, who finally paid to the firm nearly a million, and the reinvestment of this money, took much time. Vane had never been a better man of business than when he decided on these matters, thinking, with a thrill in his strong body, of the meeting, next day, and the long afternoon to be passed on the shore with the woman that he loved. Some days Vane would not go near her; he was still careful not to incur comment; he could control himself. But hardly any one was left in Newport now, and their walks far out upon the cliffs had generally escaped the notice of the world. XXV.