It was very dark--the storm of the night before still lingered in a wrack of flying clouds, scurrying one after the other, veiling the stars--and the moon was hidden--and hidden too was the sudden whiteness of Helena's face. She knew what he had to say, knew it before she had come to him--and yet she was there--and she had come resolutely enough--only now she was afraid. "I would rather walk a little, I think," she said. "Here where--where I can be within call. My absence last night seems to have made the Patriarch very uneasy, you know, and--and--let us just walk up and down here beneath the maples in front of the cottage." How heavy upon the air lay the fragrance of the flowers; how still the night was, save for the constant muffled boom of the breaking surf!--for a moment an almost ungovernable impulse swept upon her to make some excuse, anything, no matter how wild, a sudden faintness, anything, and run from him back into the cottage. And then she tried to think, think in a desperate sort of way of some subject of conversation that she might introduce that would stave off, postpone, defer the words that she knew were even now on his lips--nothing--she could think of nothing--only that she might have let the Flopper have his way, have let him tell Thornton that she had gone to bed with--the pip. The _pip_! She could have screamed out hysterically as the word flashed all unbidden upon her--it stood for a very great deal that word--her world of the years of yesterday. Could she never get away from that world; was it too late--already! Could she, even with all the earnestness, all the yearning that filled her soul, ever live it down, ever be what Naida Thornton had called her that night--a good woman! Could she-- Thornton was speaking now--how strange that she would have done anything, given anything to prevent his speaking--and done anything, given anything to make him speak! How strange and perplexed and dismayed her brain was! Love! Yes; she wanted love! God knew she wanted love such as his was--for he had shown her what love, free from abasing passion, in its purest sense, was. Like a glimpse of glory, hallowed, full of wondrous amazement, it came to her--and then her head was lowered, and the whiteness was upon her face again. He had halted suddenly and detained her with his hand upon her arm--with that touch, so full of reverence, of fine deference, that had thrilled her before--that thrilled her now, awakening into fuller life these new emotions whose birth was in gladder, sweeter, purer aspirations. "Miss Vail," he said, in a low voice, "there was a letter--a letter that Naida left--did you know of it?"