She extended her hand to him as she spoke. He took it gravely, and the two stepped out of the house and stood upon the porch. The moonlight streamed across the old ship, standing lonely and still upon the Point beneath them. The cracks and crannies, the gaping seams of the broken, mouldering sides, the evidences of decay, were hidden in the shadows cast by the soft splendor. They walked down to it and stopped in its shadow. Black, solid, and terrible in the silver light it loomed above their heads. They stood almost beneath it, and it towered into the skies above them. A trick of the imagination would have dowered it with spars covered with clouds of snowy canvas, and launched it upon the sea of dreams. The girl still held the hand of the young officer. He waited for her pleasure, something telling him he should not wait in vain. "I brought you here, Richard," she said, at last, very gravely, "that the old ship might hear you say,"--the words came from her in a faint whisper,--"that the ship might hear you say--you--loved me. Here I have stood often, gazing out upon the water, dreaming and waiting. Waiting for you, Richard, dreaming of you. And here you come to me and here--I give myself to you." She faced him as she spoke and took his other hand. He stared at her in the shadow of the ship. The little autumn breeze swept softly over their faces. Slowly he bent his head toward her. She awaited him, smiling faintly, her heart beating half fearfully. It was so new and sweet. Then his lips met her own; he kissed her, he swept her to his breast, he gathered her in his arms. Her head lay upon his shoulder, her face was upturned to his. Her eyes were light in the darkness to him. The perfume of her breath enveloped him. A faint, passionate sigh of joy and content ineffable escaped her. He drank in the white, exquisite perfection of feature so close to him; the purity of her soul spoke there equally with the passion of her heart. She was his, his own; she loved him, she gave herself to him! May God deal so with him as he dealt with her! "I love you, I love you!" he murmured. Pity 'tis that there is no new word for each new meeting and mating of human hearts in this old world. Pity 'tis that the words we say so lightly, that we use so frequently of things of less, of little, moment, should be the only ones we have with which to voice the deepest feeling of our being. Yet when the hour strikes, to each heart they come with the freshness of a new revelation, with the assurance of an eternal truth undiscovered until that hour. Never again would Emily be so happy as in that supreme moment of avowal and confession. "I love you, I love you!" It was only a whisper. She would have felt the truth had he been voiceless. "I love you, I love you!" It was but a murmur that blended with the sigh of the wind, that harmonized with the sound made by the breeze as it swept through the cracks and crannies of the ship, yet another listened, another heard.