She looked accusingly at me; she caught her breath. "Oh, how _can_ you say that! I don't believe it! He did!" "But he couldn't even see you in the dark!" "It wasn't dark--it wasn't a _bit_ dark--it was quite light enough to see anybody--_you_ saw him----" "Well, he's going away, and there's an end of it." Like a rainbow was the light that woke in her lately showering eyes. Up went the soft lip, out peeped the pearls. Back, back from their golden hearts lay the petals of the marguerites. "If," she said with extreme slowness, "if he told you he was going away, that must have been last night." I was dumb. I saw her effort to close her inner eyes on the light that broke on them, lest a wonder on a wonder should prove more than she could bear. "That was _last night_!" the triumphant words rang out. I suppose there is no such thing as one half of a miracle without the other---- "That was _last night_, and there hadn't _been_ a this morning then, and he hadn't seen me when I was buying my bathing-cap, and if he said he was going away he's changed his mind and he isn't going away at all! Neither of us is going away! Oh-h-h!" (That "Oh" echoes in my heart still.) "He isn't even thinking of going now! Because we both know now--we knew in the shop--and he loves me too!" Just to see one another--just to speak to one another--that was all they asked of me. PART II THE EVEN KEEL I That evening I sat in Ker Annic, alone. Alec and Madge had gone out for an after-dinner walk, taking a silent Jennie with them. Silent too had been our return along the cliff-tops that afternoon. Whether she already regretted having opened her heart to me I could not tell. I sat at the open window of the salon, looking out over the sea that showed pale milky green against the heavy sunset bank. Inside the room Ganymede and the Eagle had been lighted, and my shadow streamed down the steps and was lost in the darkening garden. It was not a cold evening, and yet I felt a little cold. No fire was laid behind the drawn-down iron shutter where Alec threw his crumpled tobacco packets, and it was hardly worth while troubling a maid. I closed the window, crossed to the shuttered fireplace, and sat down in a striped tapestried chair.