They descended the steep and perilous footpath zig-zagging down the face of the cliff, with the confidence of young goats, and reaching the little bathing-house, sat down on the threshold. The tide was high, and the surf seething within a few inches of the bottom step of the short ladder up and down which they had glided bare-footed daily for so many years. The fine spray damped their faces; the salt sea-breezes fanned them deliciously. Patty put her arms impulsively round her sister's neck. "Oh, Elizabeth," she said, "I am so glad for you--I _am_ so glad! It has crossed my mind several times, but I was never sure of it till to-day, and I wouldn't say anything until I was sure, or until you told me yourself." "My darling," said Elizabeth, responding to the caress, "don't be sure yet. _I_ am not sure." "_You_ are not!" exclaimed Patty, with derisive energy. "Don't try to make me believe you are a born idiot, now, because I know you too well. Why, a baby in arms could see it!" "I see it, dear, of course; both of us see it. We understand each other. But--but I don't know yet whether I shall accept him, Patty." "Don't you?" responded Patty. She had taken her arms from her sister's neck, and was clasping her knees with them in a most unsympathetic attitude. "Do you happen to know whether you love him, Elizabeth?" "Yes," whispered Elizabeth, blushing in the darkness; "I know that." "And whether he loves you?" "Yes." "Of course you do. You can't help knowing it. Nobody could. And if," proceeded Patty sternly, fixing the fatuous countenance of the man in the moon with a baleful eye, "if, under those circumstances, you don't accept him, you deserve to be a miserable, lonely woman for all the rest of your wretched life. That's my opinion if you ask me for it." Elizabeth looked at the sea in tranquil contemplation for a few seconds. Then she told Patty the story of her perplexity from the beginning to the end. "Now _what_ would you do?" she finally asked of her sister, who had listened with the utmost interest and intelligent sympathy. "If it were your own case, my darling, and you wanted to do what was right, _how_ would you decide?" "Well, Elizabeth," said Patty; "I'll tell you the truth. I should not stop to think whether it was right or wrong." "Patty!" "No. A year ago I would not have said so--a year ago I might have been able to give you the very best advice. But now--but now"--the girl stretched out her hands with the pathetic gesture that Elizabeth had seen and been struck with once before--"now, if it were my own case, I should take the man I loved, no matter _what_ he was, if he would take me." Elizabeth heaved a long sigh from the bottom of her troubled heart. She felt that Patty, to whom she had looked for help, had made her burden of responsibility heavier instead of lighter. "Let us go up to the house again," she said wearily. "There is no need to decide to-night."