With a glance round, to make sure that Isabel was not on the beach, I ran across the sandy flat, and down the narrow streets, until I came to the compound gate. Here I paused a moment to get my breath, then I pushed open the creaking gate and entered. She was standing on the verandah waiting for me, looking in her soft white dress, with its single spot of scarlet blossom, more daintily lovely even than the visions my memory had conjured up. I hurried across the compound, and ran up the stairs, at the head of which she met me with outstretched hands and a radiant smile of welcome. In a moment all my fine speeches were forgotten; all my resolutions to consider the delicacy of our position vanished before the ingenuous love that sparkled in her eyes; and without a word I took her in my arms and kissed her. She did not resent my bluntness, but only murmured some broken words of joy and relief at seeing me alive and well, till growing more conscious, she made as if she would gently disengage herself, and this with a very pretty confusion. But possession is nine points of the law, and I would not give up my advantage. “Isabel,” I whispered, “this is what I have thought of and longed for in all the long months of my wanderings--this, and to hear you say that you love me, that there is to be no more parting for us until the end.” She looked up into my face with grave frankness. “You may hear me say it now,” said she, “as you might have heard me months ago. When you went away my heart and my world went with you.” “If I had, I should never have gone,” I said. “Then would there have been saved a world of sorrow and heart-sickness in this house,” she replied; and with a sudden burst of emotion she exclaimed: “Oh! my dear! how long the days have been! How dark and full of sickening dread, and hope dying into despair!” Her eyes filled at the recollection, and laying her head on my shoulder, she wept silently. I was touched with remorse at the thought of her sufferings, but yet my heart was singing with joy. “Come, my dearest,” I said, “this is no time for weeping or thoughts of sorrow and sadness. Let us dry our eyes and rejoice; ‘for, lo! the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, and the time of the singing of birds is come.’” EPILOGUE. I am writing these last few lines, telling of the end of my youthful wanderings, by an open window that looks out across the sunlit sea, where the Goodwins sleep peacefully amidst the summer blue, and the idle shipping lingers in the Downs by the hazy Sandwich shore. Down in the garden I can see a white-haired old man sitting on a bench enjoying a cigarette which the deft fingers of Isabel have just rolled and lit for him. The pair are watching a burly old man who is rigging a flagstaff with the help of a tall, sturdy boy; and as the former turns to his assistant with a wry, genial smile, I see that the brown, wrinkled face is that of my old friend Captain Bithery.