"And it would not seem like this, oh, Oona! if you could see my heart." She shook her head, looking at him all the while with that strange smile, and then drew away her hand and repeated, "Hamish is waiting." Hamish in the background, standing up against the shining of the water, with his oar in his hand, waited with his anxious eyes upon his young lady, not knowing how it was. He would have pitched Lord Erradeen into the loch, or laid him at his feet with Highland passion, had she given him a sign. He held the boat for him instead to step in, with an anxious countenance. Love or hate, or madness or good meaning, Hamish could not make out what it was. "To-morrow!" Walter said, "if I can live till to-morrow in this suspense----" She waved her hand to him, and Hamish pushed off. And Oona stood as in a dream, seeing over again the scene which had been in her mind for so long--but changed. She had watched him go away before, eager to be gone, carrying her life with him without knowing it, without desiring it: he unaware of what he was doing, she watching surprised, bereaved of herself, innocently and unaware. How poignant had that parting been! But now it was different. He gazed back at her now, as she stood on the beach, leaving his life with her, all that was in him straining towards her, gazing till they were each to the other but a speck in the distance. Two that were one! Oh, not perhaps for mutual joy, not for the happiness that love on the surface seems to mean--rather for the burden, the disappointment, the shame. She waved her hand once more over the cold water, and then turned away. Till to-morrow--"if I can live till to-morrow"--as he had said. CHAPTER XI.