THE beach was comparatively deserted. After the week-end, which had been unusually gay, the few scattered groups gathered under the hired umbrellas, with here and there the flash of an individual crimson or green parasol, scarcely served to populate the stretch of hot sand.

Near his stand, the Harvard student who was serving as life-guard during the summer months stood, bronzed and athletic, talking to a young fellow whose scant bathing costume revealed the lines and muscles of an Antinous.

“It is the day like this that strains my nerves,” the guard was saying. “When the surf is filled with people, even if some one goes under, there are a score of hands to give rescue, but that girl out there now, beyond the breakers, makes me uneasy.”

“Swims like a fish,” responded the Antinous. “I’ve watched her for days.”

“But she isn’t a fish, and if the realization came to her out there in the water, she’d be altogether like a woman.”

“Since you are ill at ease about her, suppose I swim out, just to relieve your mind?”

The guard nodded. There was the suspicion of a smile about his lips, but he continued to watch the woman in question.

The distance to which the venturesome swimmer had gone was greater than had been apparent from the beach, and before Merrington had made half of it, the eyes of all those upon the sand and of those in the surf were upon the woman and himself. Only the swimmers themselves remained oblivious of the general interest.

Merrington swam on with the free, easy strokes of one to whom deep water conveys no terrors. The very touch of the sea was tonic that July morning, and he stretched his sinuous limbs with the overbounding energy and delight of a perfect manhood. The thought of danger, even to another, seemed an absurd thing to him, so sang the lusty blood in his veins. Yet he swam with unerring, cleaving strokes after the woman, who still went outward.

It was not until he had almost overtaken her that it occurred to him that it might be necessary to formulate an excuse for his following. The action had been so direct as to admit of no misunderstanding. Consequently, as she turned, and found him near her, Merrington spoke.

“Miss Selwyn, if you will pardon me, it is not without danger that you come so far out from shore. My name is Merrington—Geoffrey Merrington.”

She flushed slightly under the clear tan of her skin; then she bowed her crimson ’kerchiefed head gravely.

“Thank you for your trouble, but I have never been drowned yet.”

“Nor have I,” he affirmed, laughing, keeping stroke with her. “Nor do I want to be to-day.”

For answer, she turned her back upon him, and deliberately swam seaward. Merrington followed.

“Miss Selwyn,” he said, presently, when her audacity sent queer sensations about his heart, “may I remind you that this coast has many counter-currents? Believe me, you should not venture out further—not half so far.”

If she heard, she made no sign of doing so. Merrington, with an added determination, cast a glance to shore, where he could see small forms standing together in a way that, even at that distance, spelled anxiety. He caught a glimpse of the guard, erect upon his observation stand. Then he threw out his splendid limbs in strokes that sent him beyond the girl, and, turning, faced her.

“Miss Selwyn, the entire beach is watching us. They will send a boat for us in a moment, and compel our return.”

At that she looked him squarely in the eyes, the fire in her own blazing into full wrath.

“This is an unwarrantable liberty.”

Merrington smiled. It had frequently been said that his smile made him irresistible for any purpose he might have in mind. In all her anger, Jacqueline was conscious of the full-throated tones of his voice.

“It has the highest warrant—that put upon it by Miss Selwyn herself.”

Perhaps it was his words, or, more probably, the masterful man himself, that made her color vividly. Merrington held his clear, bold eyes upon her as she hesitated.

“If I promise you to return now, will you leave me?” she asked, slowly.

“No, Miss Selwyn.”

“Look!” she commanded, imperiously, pointing to the shore.

When Merrington turned his face a second later there was no sign of the girl. It seemed to him minutes before he caught sight of the familiar crimson head, freshly risen from the sea, some distance off. His own existence was apparently forgotten.

At this point of the game something altogether unexpected came over the youth, favored of gods and man, and accustomed to getting what he would. The remembrance of the scorn in the dark eyes that had flashed into his stung him. The recollection of the defiance in the face and a something bewitching in the taunting curves of the full lips, sent a fire that was far from unpleasant through his blood. He stretched out the supple muscles of his arms, and gave chase.

“That was very neatly done, Miss Selwyn,” he said, when his vigorous action had brought them together again. “I think I may safely promise, however, that you will not outwit me again.”

She raised her eyebrows ever so slightly. He was sure there was a twinkle in the downcast eyes, but it was equally evident that the girl did not intend to encourage his presumption by any speech. As he watched her with a swiftly increasing interest, she turned over upon her back with a complacence that was a rebuke, floating unconcernedly past him.

Merrington followed. That he was being remorselessly snubbed for his pains was giving him a novel sensation of self-pity that did not seem to affect his genial humor very acutely. It served to keep him silent, however. When Jacqueline sat up suddenly, the first thing that she saw was Merrington’s gleaming eyes looking into her own. He had been so near to her, when she unexpectedly faced him, that she could not ignore his presence. Had he spoken, she might have used silence to positive purpose. As it was, she said, coldly:

“You are strangely persistent.”

“I am never conquered,” he boasted.

For a brief moment she let her glance sweep over him as he lay in the transparent shadow of the waves. A sense of vexation at his superb virility, at his assured mastery of the situation, left her trembling. Merrington misconstrued the reason.

“You are becoming chilled. We are a long way from the shore. If you were to have a cramp now!”

“You’d have the cheap distinction of being a hero of the beach,” she ejaculated, uncompromisingly rude.

“The poor opinion of the beach would not affect me in the least,” he laughed, softly, “if you did not share it.”

“Mr. Merrington,” she flashed, “if you will swim back to the shore, I shall follow you at an agreeable distance.”

“You have given me the slip once,” he said, slowly. “I am acting ex officio; I fear I must be the judge of the agreeableness of the distance.” Abruptly his banter fell from him. The dancing light in his large eyes darkened into intensity. “Won’t you let me see you safely in, Miss Selwyn?”

“Have your own way, then,” she said, with swift impatience, turning toward the land. Merrington kept but an arm’s-length between them.

As they came out of the water, a little distance apart, a tall woman separated herself from a group standing to one side, and bore down upon Jacqueline.

“What a fright you have given us!” she cried. “I came down to the beach to find you, and found instead everyone watching your rescue in mid-ocean. Who was your deliverer?”

“Be sensible, Peggie. I do not know who it was that drove me in by his officious intrusion.”

“Intrusion! Good gracious, Jacqueline, do you think you own the Atlantic?”

Mrs. Le Moyne turned to look at the man, who, having accomplished his purpose, was making his way to the stand of the guard once more. She gave a little cry of surprise, which arrested his attention.

“Geoffrey! Where in the world did you come from?”

“Peggie!” Merrington cried, gleefully. “You don’t mean to say you’re here?”

“I never make useless remarks, Geoffrey. How good you are looking! Of course I needn’t introduce you now to Miss Selwyn. Jacqueline, this is Mr. Merrington, my only and best cousin.”

Jacqueline bowed stiffly, without looking up. She was wringing the water from the skirt of her suit.

“Of course,” Mrs. Le Moyne laughed, “it’s absurd to introduce people that have been across seas together, but Jacqueline said she didn’t know you, Geof. When did you come down, and where are you? But it doesn’t matter. You must come to my cottage. I am just next door to Jacqueline—plenty of room for you.”

Merrington looked at the girl, who apparently did not hear. In a moment she turned, and joined the group which Mrs. Le Moyne had forsaken.

“She will never forgive me for intruding upon her out there,” Merrington said, indicating the sea by a sidewise motion of his head. “She was really in danger, but wouldn’t acknowledge it.”

“And you want her to forgive you! I can see that with half an eye. What a boy you are still, for all your body and legs! Have you let her see that you care for her?”

“Hold on, there,” he laughed, folding his arms as he stood dripping before her. “Don’t be in such a hurry.”

She looked him over carefully.

“Of course you made love to her more or less earnestly,” she said, frankly. “It may only have been with your eyes, but it is a tendency you can’t resist. The only trouble is, you never mean it.”

“If I did, Peggie, she would have none of me, and I did not mean to, because——”

“Why?”

“I should rather do it to better purpose later on.”

“Really!” laughed his cousin. “That is the first time I’ve ever known you willing to put any purpose in the indulgence.”

The gravity of his manner made her serious also.

“Peggie, old girl, this is the first time the indulgence has become a necessity.”

Mrs. Le Moyne glanced over the wide beach, and above, at the almost deserted board walk. Her party had withdrawn under the shade of the promenade, and the bathers had all disappeared. She and Merrington were alone except for a few outstretched figures, their faces covered with newspapers. She turned to her companion.

“Go and get on some clothes,” she said, a hint of amusement about her eyes. “It’s absurd to talk love to a man in such a state of nature as his bathing suit.”

II.

Merrington had not been slow to avail himself of Mrs. Le Moyne’s invitation to transfer his things from the hotel to her cottage. Any hesitation he might have felt at abandoning the bachelor freedom of the public hostelry was quite overcome when she pointed out to him, from the windows of the room she offered, a view of the Selwyn cottage, just across a plot of trimly kept grass.

For the first few days the move did not seem to profit him any in his desire to see more of Jacqueline. Once he had met her on her way to the beach, and she had given him a bare nod of recognition. Now and again he caught glimpses of her on the neighboring veranda, but she never let her glances stray in the direction of Mrs. Le Moyne’s cottage. Several times when he had passed her on the board walk at the promenade hour, she had not cared to notice him, and never with anything but a bow so formal as to make it evident that she did not cut him entirely merely because of his cousin’s introduction. Merrington knew, for the first time in his enviable life, the pangs of misprized love.

His cousin was watching the course of his malady with interest.

“What do you know about Jacqueline?” she asked him one morning, as they sat upon their veranda, and in response to his reiterated determination to conquer that young lady’s aversion and make her his wife.

Merrington leaned forward, his boyish face radiant, the bronze of his skin dark against the white suit he wore. His cousin let her eyes rest on him with an admiration he was too modest to detect.

“Nothing and everything,” he returned, after a time. “She is the most striking girl I’ve ever seen. She is plucky and daring and defiant.”

“Charming qualities for a wife! Is that all?”

“I can’t put the rest in words,” he answered, coloring swarthily.

Just then the latch of the Selwyns’ front gate clicked, and Jacqueline appeared on the shaded street. Peggie came to a speedy resolution.

“Jacqueline!” she cried. “Wait a minute until I get my hat. I want to join you.”

As the girl stopped at the foot of the path, Merrington went briskly toward her. She met him with grave annoyance.

“We have become near neighbors, Miss Selwyn.” There was not a trace of nervousness in the clear tones.

“That is a seaside perquisite. Asbury, especially, makes the whole world kin.”

He could not have said that she was rude, but every word was a rebuff and a disclaimer of intimacy. His instinct told him it was not rudeness of which she was accusing him. So much, at least, had his introduction to her wrought. The reflection made him smile genially, and she noted how dazzling his even teeth were in his suntanned face.

“Miss Selwyn, I wish you would forgive me.”

“Really there is nothing to forgive. Do you think Mrs. Le Moyne has forgotten me?”

“I am sure she has not. Do you know that is the first friendly remark you have made me?”

He saw her brows arch themselves slightly while her glance sought him an instant.

“To be frank with you,” she said, “I do not know that I meant it to be particularly friendly.”

“It wasn’t, but you have been so particularly unfriendly.”

She flushed, turning long before she needed to greet Peggie, who came leisurely down the walk with book and parasol, and tossed a cap to Merrington.

“We are all going to listen to the music, isn’t that it?” she asked. “The orchestra is really worth hearing this year—too good, indeed, for the crowd that goes to the pavilions.”

“I am going in the water,” Jacqueline said, laying an accent of defense on the pronoun. They walked on together, Peggie in the middle.

“Let us all go,” Merrington urged. “It is a gorgeous day. The sea is absolutely singing to us.”

When they reached the board walk, the sea stretched out before them resplendent in the sun. There were a few bathers at the upper lines, but lower down, the beach could be seen already dotted by the patrons of the more central baths. In the glare of the hot sun the walk was empty, but in the grateful coolness of the pavilions many had gathered to hear the music. Peggie espied an acquaintance on the platform above them, and ran thither. Jacqueline was plainly provoked.

“If Peggy deserts us,” Merrington said, sententiously, “why should we not desert Peggie?”

Jacqueline frowned.

“Need I detain you?” she asked. “I was coming here alone when your cousin stopped me. That is, I mean, I was going in the water. I had no intention of stopping in this sunless dampness.”

“I hate it, too. Why should we stop?”

The girl looked at him intently, her heart quickening with an emotion that she could not have defined, so complex was it, indeed, of many emotions. Mingled with her anger and annoyance was an almost imperceptible tremor of fear which made her catch her breath.

Merrington waited patiently for her answer. There was nothing in the bold squareness of his youthful attitude to betoken the uncertainty of mind in which she was holding him. On the contrary, he smiled with well-assumed assurance, his eyes frankly admiring in their gaze. Jacqueline spoke, suppressing partially her irritation:

“How dull you must be finding the time! Do you know no one down here?”

“I have forgotten time and people.” The meaning in his look and voice sent the blood to the girl’s face. She glanced about her uneasily, but Peggie’s back, and the animation with which she was talking to her friends, gave no encouragement. She turned, impulsively.

“Come,” she said, imperiously enough. “We will go in the water for a little while.”

To Merrington’s surprise, when he appeared on the beach in his swimming suit, Jacqueline was already in the surf. This tacit avoidance of him banished the smile from his lips for a moment as her more positive combativeness had not been able to do.

That he was really in love at last, Merrington knew beyond the possibility of a doubt. He knew it, because in all the twenty-six years of his petted life he had never experienced anything like this peaceful elation underlying all the tremor of his senses. Jacqueline disdained him; he recognized that fact, but it caused him no more genuine annoyance than the breaking upon him, when he entered the surf that was now rolling in before him, of the waves which his manhood delighted to buffet and overcome. For much favoring had never spoiled the sweetness of his character, and he met resistance with a healthy determination.

He strolled into the surf, and a great billow lifted Jacqueline into his arms. He held her firmly as another followed close upon.

“I hate the surf,” she gasped, blinded and helpless. “It does exactly with you what you do not want.”

“Do you think so? Now rise to this one.”

He lifted her over a magnificent roller, turning to watch it break, and sweep inward the less daring bathers near shore.

“Why did you not wait for me?” he asked.

“I never for a moment thought it necessary.”

He looked delighted.

“Is it very hard for you to accept the inevitable, Miss Selwyn?”

“In what way, Mr. Merrington?”

“In the way of my devotion?”

She hesitated, not daring to take him seriously. He still held her hands, and the depth of the water at its smoothest was up to her neck as they stood.

“We must look like a pair of jumping-jacks from the shore,” she said, with a swift remembrance of his deserved punishment at her hands, and of their present position. His strong muscles never seemed to tire of lifting her to each succeeding billow. She hardly knew how her reticence had slipped from her, but now, at the risk of being bowled over by a wave, she released her hands from his. He turned back with her.

“Do not let me take you in,” she said, politely formal. “You have had no swim at all.”

“There is always the ocean,” he replied.

III.

It was easier for Jacqueline to assure herself that she would discourage Merrington’s obvious attentions than it was in fact possible for her to do so. With every meeting she was finding it harder to hold her own against him.

It was his imperturbable good nature that defeated her. If she could have provoked him to anger or even to moodiness, she would have found it easier to forgive his original offense. Moreover, underlying all of the determined deference of his bearing to her, there was that which brought an undefined thrill of fear, that touch of primitive mastery in his wooing with which a man of strong virility may yet transfuse his personality through the pallid conventions of the centuries. It was but a small consolation that she could still deny him the invitation to call upon her at her father’s house, without which even so frequent an intercourse as theirs had become remained but a street acquaintance.

Things had reached this pass when, one Saturday afternoon, Jacqueline found herself threading her way among the crowds that packed the station awaiting the incoming trains from New York, bringing their loads of week-end guests. As she wedged her way to the front, a little bewildered by the jam, she espied Merrington’s broad shoulders at the outermost edge of the crowd. At the same instant he saw her, and in a moment was beside her.

“This is worse than the breakers,” he said, with a nod of his capped head at the surging crowd, “and almost as dangerous, and, of course, you are to be found at the outer verge.”

“Do you think they all have friends coming? What an elastic place it is!”

“Mere idle curiosity brings many of them, a summer idleness to see new faces. It brought me.”

“I came to meet a cousin,” she said, a little sharply.

“Then I shall be handy with bag and baggage. Even in these days, I believe, ladies carry things when they travel.”

Jacqueline looked at his gray eyes with an expression that baffled him. At length she spoke.

“My cousin happens to be a man. He doubtless will carry the regulation dress-suit case, which he is quite able to manage himself.”

Merrington let her irony pass unnoticed.

“How little you have allowed me to learn about you,” he said, holding her sunshade so as to break the glare in her eyes, “and we have known each other—how long?”

“Over two weeks,” she replied, instantly, and then shut her lips tight, coloring crimson.

“And it seems to me for always. Do you think time has anything to do with feelings of intimacy?”

“Oh, yes. There is the summer-time intimacy which the cool weather and return to town put an end to.” She leaned past him with regained composure, looking down the cinder-strewn tracks, over the shining rails of which heat devils shimmered upward.

“You are thinking of the summer girl and her beaux,” he said, softly. “I wasn’t.”

“Neither was I.”

“Tell me about your cousin,” he asked, demurely. “Isn’t it strange that you and Peggie should both have cousins?”

“My cousin is a very nice man. He is not a bit like you.” Then her audacity wavered. “He is very blond. Is the train late?”

“I hope so.”

“I hope not.”

It was not, and in a minute more it rolled in, distractingly long and overflowing with eager passengers. “How shall I ever find him?” Jacqueline cried, in dismay. “He may be already out of a dozen cars and lost in the mob, and he doesn’t know the way.”

“What is he like?” Merrington asked.

“Oh, he is tall, like you, and square-shouldered and very good-looking, only his hair isn’t like yours.”

“Then I’m to look for some one like me with blond hair, is that it?”

“Of course not,” she exclaimed, indignantly. “He isn’t at all like you, but you offered to help, and you are tall.”

Merrington, curiously happy, he could not just know why, looked around over the sea of people.

“There is some one I know with yellow hair,” he said, presently.

“I wouldn’t acknowledge it if I did,” Jacqueline replied, with stiff propriety, but for once Merrington was unmindful of her words, and was waving his hand with facile grace above his head.

“There’s Dick, now!” the girl cried, as a tall, blond young fellow bore down upon them; then she stood still in amazement as the two men seized hands. “You two know each other!” she exclaimed.

“Know each other! I should say we did. Didn’t we ‘do’ Europe together for a year, and then dine with each other the night we got home? How’s that for a test, Jack?”

“Splendid,” Jacqueline responded, but she was not feeling very comfortable.

When they reached the waiting trap, and Merrington had helped Jacqueline up, Brinton turned to his friend.

“Where are you staying?”

“My cousin, Peggie Le Moyne, is down here. I am with her.”

In spite of her reluctance, Jacqueline spoke.

“Mrs. Le Moyne’s cottage is next door to ours, Dick.”

“Good!” exclaimed Brinton. “I say, Jack, have him over to dinner to-night.”

Jacqueline turned to Merrington. “Will you come?” she asked, a lovely smile adding to the beauty of her blushes.

Merrington hesitated. He felt that the invitation had been forced.

“Peggie will spare you,” Jacqueline urged, “and old friends do not turn up every day.”

“Thank you,” said Merrington. “I will come.”

IV.

“You are a very lucky young man,” said Peggie Le Moyne to her cousin, when he had told her of the invitation. “Of course Jacqueline was cornered, and gave it perforce, but there is a potency in hospitality that works both ways. Besides, when a man has seen a woman in her home she can never be altogether formal to him again.”

“I feel as though I were sneaking in through the back door, all the same,” Merrington replied, more moodily than was his wont.

Notwithstanding his misgivings, Jacqueline met her guest with a graciousness that made her adorable in his sight. Driven from her vantage ground though she was by her cousin’s outspoken invitation to Merrington, there was no hint of anything but cordiality in her welcome.

It was her more strictly feminine side that she exhibited that evening. There was nothing about her save the delicate tan of her skin to remind Merrington that the girl of the surf and sun-flooded beach was one with the dainty and charming woman in the trailing muslin, with the soft masses of her hair dark above the small head.

“Why did you never mention to me your friendship with my cousin?” she asked him after dinner, finding herself for the moment alone with him in the dimly lit parlor. He answered with native frankness:

“You never encouraged me to talk about myself, and, to tell you the truth, I never thought of anyone when with you—except yourself.”

“Dick has been telling me of your long friendship.”

“It has never brought me anything that I would less wish to part with than this pleasure to-night.”

“I do not know,” she said, musingly, yet with a precision nearer akin to her former treatment of him than she had shown that evening, “that pleasures are what we should value most in our friendships. You remember what Burns says about them?”

“Is that a hint or a threat?” he asked, smiling.

She colored slowly and threw him a question that changed the subject.

“Will you go with Dick and me to see the mob to-night? He does not know the delights of this place. Indeed, I think he came down resigned to boredom, until he met you.” She appealed to Brinton for confirmation of her remark as he sauntered in.

“Don’t make me fib after a full dinner, Jack,” he protested. “Besides, it isn’t anything like what I expected.”

“There,” she laughed, rising; “but now we are going to take you out and realize your expectations, Mr. Merrington and I.”

As they walked along under the pulsing stars, the void of the sea broken before them in crested waves that gleamed ghostly, a strange disinclination for speech beset Merrington. The fact that he could, without any sense of restraint, rather with a feeling of intimacy that sent delirious thrills along his veins, be with Jacqueline as one sharing her mood and interest so surely that he turned to silence in preference to words, placed, as it were, a bewitching perspective to his love. The mood changed, indeed, by the time they reached the crowded portion of the board walk, for it was not Merrington’s nature to keep silence long in the midst of jollification, and the Saturday night spirit was abroad. Moreover, he suddenly found himself alone with Jacqueline.

“I never had a brother,” she remarked, coming to a standstill by the railing of the walk, “but if they hold themselves any freer to do cavalier things than cousins, I am glad I hadn’t.” She showed annoyance in the glance she sent at the laughing party her cousin had joined. “Maybe he will leave them soon,” she added.

“I hope not. I am sure he won’t. The taste of cousins and brothers is always poor, but it is to be depended on.”

“You are right,” she said, severely. “He does not deserve to have us wait for him.”

Under the lower pavilion, the band was playing a Hungarian rhapsody, and the crowd had packed itself close to listen. Merrington followed Jacqueline slowly through the current moving in the middle. She stopped so abruptly that he pressed upon her, and steadied himself by a touch upon her arm.

“Why should we go on?” she asked, facing him. “Dick is joined to his idols, let him alone. Shall we walk back where we may be quiet? Or do you care for the crowd?”

He did not heed her last question, so rapturous was the music of her other. He led her through the slowly moving impact of people, impatient until he might get her beyond and to himself. Neither said very much until they were where the crowd ceased to make itself felt, and the night reclaimed its darkness from the glare of the many electric lights of the gala part of the town.

He was madly palpitant under the almost somber calm which he preserved outwardly. His passion, like a fever long incubating, leaped suddenly into full force by no conscious volition of his own. That evening, with Jacqueline in her home, the spell of the woman with the halo of domesticity around her had swept his love into an ardent desire—the desire of the man to have the woman he loves in a home of his own. And now he was with her alone under the throbbing stars, and something other than her former intolerance of him was keeping Jacqueline wordless. He knew that it was something very different, knew it by the instinct of the lover, and his heart bounded at her silence. When he spoke, Jacqueline shivered at the ground-roll of emotion which his words seemed to break into a momentary surge.

“I am very glad that Brinton came today.”

She nodded, acquiescent. She had meant to speak, but the words stuck.

“When the avalanche is ready,” he murmured, “or the sea is at the flood, a touch of nature’s breath—and the thing is done.”

“How prosaically you drop your figures,” she said, with a nervous laugh. “What are you trying to say?”

“Jacqueline!”

She started away from him, her face, very white, turned to his.

“Do I frighten you?”

“Yes,” she whispered, her eyes held by his penetrating gaze.

Merrington smiled.

“And yet,” he said, so low that the words seemed to her almost as breathing in her ears, “I would give every drop of blood, every fiber in my body, to make you happy, for I love you with every drop of my blood.”

“Mr. Merrington——” she began, but he cut her short.

“Listen to me,” he said, guiding her into the little balcony that projected from the walk just where they were, and overhung the beach. “No man, since man and woman were made for each other, has wanted a woman more than I want you. Every bit of myself, body and soul, soul and body, I offer you, Jacqueline, in return for your love.”

“I have no love for you,” she breathed, slowly.

“You must have. Such love as I have for you compels love in return.”

She looked away, struggling with herself. At last her words came, strained and muffled.

“I have always disliked you. You know it.”

“I would rather have your love at once, of course,” he said, with a patience that sat well upon his power, “but I am not afraid of your dislike.” He held out his hands impulsively. “Jacqueline, you must be my wife. You are going to be my wife.”

She was silent, accepting, with a dullness of compliance, the overmastering sense of his determination, her will for the moment existing as something benumbed within her. The dashing of the sea beneath them broke through its own monotony, and, with her consciousness of it, a remembrance of Merrington’s early words rushed to her mind. She drew herself up with a snapping of the spell that had held her.

“You told me once that you had never been conquered, but the days are past when a man carries a wife by storm. Shall we go on, Mr. Merrington?”

“Jacqueline, do you love me?”

She had started forward, but at the tense question, fell back against the railing of the balcony. There was that in the calm of Merrington’s manner that left her breathless.

“I believe you do love me in your heart of hearts,” he said, the passion of his tones thrilling through the words, though he stood rigidly erect before her. “You may not know it, but you do, and I am going to make you know it, because I cannot live without your love, which, being mine, you shall not keep from me.”

“Oh!” she cried, facing him at her full height, “how I hate you for that! Love you! From the first moment you spoke to me I have disliked you. You are a cave-dweller! A savage! Such men as you don’t want wives. They want mates.”

V.

The next day Jacqueline was not on the beach, but as the day was Sunday, and as he knew her aversion to holiday crowds, Merrington did not take this as any indication that she especially desired to avoid him. In the afternoon Peggie, who always did what she was wanted to do without asking, proposed to her cousin that they stop with their roadcart and take up Jacqueline and Brinton. But Jacqueline had a headache, so Brinton said, as he mounted to the seat beside Peggie, leaving Merrington in solitary state behind the grays all the way to Seabright and back. When he dropped in casually that evening to see his friend, Mr. Selwyn met him with the intelligence that Jacqueline and her cousin had gone out for an informal tea with friends. Things began to look serious. Peggie, whose ears and eyes had been open, hailed Merrington as he sauntered slowly up her front walk. “No one at home but papa, eh, Geof? I felt that headache of Jacqueline’s was a bluff. What gave it to her?”

“Don’t ask questions,” he returned, a little disconsolately.

“Oh, dear!” she sighed, as he seated himself on the low railing before her, “why did you do it in this heat? Men are so impatient.”

“It wasn’t anything I asked her. It was the statement of a fact that offended.”

“Of course you told her you loved her, but that implied a question, didn’t it?”

Merrington lit his pipe with deliberation. In the light of the match Peggie saw his eyes, bright and humorous, fixed on her face.

“I told her she loved me,” he said, between puffs. “What does that imply?”

“You didn’t!” was Peggie’s unsatisfactory answer. Then she was silent for quite five minutes. She entirely approved, however, of his purpose, expressed a little later, to go up to the city for a few days.

“And take my advice,” she said, rising to leave him, “and forget that you ever laid eyes on Miss Selwyn. You’ve done the one unpardonable thing in a woman’s sight.”

After his luncheon the next day, Merrington was aimlessly standing on the corner of Broadway and Twenty-sixth Street when the clang of bells and the shriek of a fire-engine whistle dashed the purposeless hour with an instant’s interest. By some occult power, the drivers of several coupÉs and hansoms, impelled by the same thought of safety and curiosity, turned their vehicles into the short side street between Broadway and Fifth Avenue, pausing there to see the engine tear by. By a further process of this psychic power, one and all suddenly became aware that the street they blocked was the street for which the rapidly driven horses were heading. Merrington, with a quick thrill of excitement, straightened his height, watching the now thoroughly frenzied impasse. At that moment a swiftly driven hansom turned for refuge into the congested street, the clatter and frantic signals of the engine just behind. Then his heart leaped, and fell down, for the girl in the hansom, heedless of her danger, was Jacqueline.

How he forced his way through the crowd that had gathered before him, sprang before the rearing and terrified horses of the engine checked in full flight, tore open the doors of the hansom and lifted out the girl, Merrington could not have said. As he did so, however, the engine tore on, carrying with it a wheel of the hansom. Jacqueline, white and shaken, stood in his arms.

“You!” she gasped.

“I might say the same,” he answered, the blood coming back under his bronze, but he seemed to speak with a very dry humor, indeed, for his eyes were fixed upon her, dark almost beyond her recognition. Her own drooped, as she shuddered slightly. “Don’t faint,” he begged, in quick alarm. She shook her head.

“I thought you were down there,” she murmured.

“I came away that you might have the sea to yourself. That is, I thought I came. It must be that I was sent.”

“I came away for the same reason,” she confessed. She was quite aware that the colors of her resentment against him were flying very low, but two things, at least, kept her humble. She had been badly frightened, and her hat was awry. Somewhere about her there was a third reason that, as she became conscious of it, made her abruptly stand away from him and at once cloak her humility.

“I need not trouble you any more. You have been very good.”

His lips tightened grimly. He was not yet altogether over his alarm.

“You needn’t have troubled me at all—if you care to call it trouble—for you need not have come to town at all. Your hansom is wrecked, however. Shall I call another?”

“Let us walk,” she returned, with a meekness that made his heart throb wildly. Merrington dismissed the cabman, giving him such a tip and such a berating for his carelessness that the man was left pondering whether he was considered a hero or a fool. Jacqueline was looking on with a new light in her regard. How big and strong he was, she thought. No wonder he was so masterful. Her cheeks were flushed when he turned to join her.

“Where is it?” he asked, taking his place beside her.

“Anywhere. I was just killing time.”

“And do you mean to say that thought of meeting me actually drove you from one place to another?” The reproach in his voice fed her humility hugely, but she even tilted her head back on the firmness of her neck, and became perverse.

“I was really enjoying my day in town. I like to see New York in midsummer. It is like meeting a woman you have known only superficially, suddenly in negligÉe. Don’t you think so?”

“I had never thought of it in that way. Maybe my lack of experience puts a damper on my imagination.”

She stopped with admirably feigned compunction.

“I am afraid I am keeping you from an engagement.”

“You are.”

She drew her brows together, puzzled, more hurt than provoked at his candor. “Then please go,” she pleaded. “Was it very important?”

“Essentially so; to me, at least.”

She shrank somewhat from the look in his eyes, but held out her hand with an accession of friendliness. The broad avenue was nearly deserted at the moment.

“I have been thoughtless, but you said—that is, I thought you, too, were just putting in your time to-day.” She smiled at him a little shyly.

“The engagement I had in mind can’t possibly come to pass without you.” He was holding her hand, and looking from it to her face, as though uncertain of this new graciousness in her.

She laughed, attempting to withdraw her hand.

“Mr. Merrington, while no one in sight would suspect the absurdity of our conversation, suppose we walk on.”

“Now, if I were that poor cave-dweller you likened me to,” he said, not at all balking at the allusion, “I’d take you to the Little Church Around the Corner.”

“Take me, anyway, will you not?” she surprised him by saying. “I am fond of that little church.”

They were alone. Into the cool gloom the light of the outer day fell through windows of exquisite dyes. Jacqueline sighed with a sense of relief that was greater than she had anticipated. She made up her mind that when she left the church she would go straight to the boat. In the meantime, she felt sure that Merrington, if somewhat restless, would, at least, not pursue his determined wooing.

It nonplused her to realize in what a different spirit she was accepting that wooing. It did not seem to be within the range of her emotions to summon up against him even a pale reflection of the fierce anger with which she had met his first declaration, only two evenings before. It was hard to believe that it had been only two evenings ago. In some indefinable way, she knew him so much better to-day. During the long hours of the previous day, when she had avoided him with persistent purpose, her anger had not abated, nor yet this morning, when she turned her back on the sea, and put the breach of other surroundings between him and herself. Now she knew, with a warm wave of color, that there had been no breach all this time in her thought of him, even when she had most sought to have him think she was unmindful.

Under the force of this consideration, she slipped into a pew and sat down, watching Merrington, as he stood with his back to her, a shaft of topaz light outlining the firm, square cut of his profile and the lithe blocking of his figure. Something in his attitude of vigorous yet refined enjoyment of the painted window showed him to Jacqueline in a new phase of his character. He turned abruptly to appeal to her, and his hand rested on hers as it lay on the top of the pew. She had withdrawn her glove, and the cool, dry touch of his flesh affected her strangely. She rose quickly, but her hand still lay beneath his.

The words he had been going to say died upon his lips. What he saw in the girl’s face made him forget the art of the world in the magnetic thrill of their young nature.

“It is another omen,” he murmured, his strong fingers closing about the slimness of her hand. “Even unconsciously we find each other.”

For a moment she did not resist his pressure. Then she drew her hand away. He noticed that she was paler than her wont.

“I am not a bit superstitious,” she said, softly but clearly. “I could never detect an omen, good or bad.”

“I have the faculty. It will serve for both.”

“You are not religious.” She spoke with a hint of reproach in the statement that was really to him a caress. He let her pass by him out into the aisle, and walked with her toward the chancel, taking up her words.

“I am reverent, and I love.”

She shook her head, but made no other answer. Her heart was beating until she dared not speak, and she walked on because she dared not stop. In the extreme corner of the chapel-like annex she came to a standstill, facing him with a timidity that appealed unnoticed.

Merrington himself had followed, his senses tingling and his vision a blur. When they stopped, his heart flamed into words.

“Do you not see that it must be, because it is?” Resting both hands on the backs of the pews between which she stood, he held her prisoner.

She implored him silently.

“You think I am not in earnest, that I am impetuous, that I do not know you, do not know my own mind, perhaps. I did not need to know you as the social man knows women. At the first moment I spoke to you I knew what it had been that, ever since I first saw you, had filled me with a newness, a joy, a something that has no name because it underlies and embraces all things—love, love, the love of a soul for a soul, of a heart for a heart, of a man for the woman of all women for him. Jacqueline!”

He bent to see her averted face, but she held up her hand, entreating. He seized it in his own.

“That avalanche I spoke of the other night is started again. You did not stop it. You cannot stop it. If you do not hear me now, the moment will come at another time. It is the fulfillment of my being, to love you as you never dreamed of love, as no one else will ever love you, and to tell you so, over and over again, until it is music in your ears.”

He was close to her. In the gathering twilight of the church her face seemed very white, and she was watching his lips with a species of enchantment. She did not see the ardor in his eyes that made them glow as with fire, but as he ceased speaking, her lashes quivered and fell.

“I shall never give you up,” he whispered, his lips near her ear. “The bud comes no surer to the tree, the rose comes no surer from the bud, than my love will awaken love in you. Is it not so?”

The swift color darkened her face to the heavy shadow about her brow, and she pressed her hand against his breast resistingly. But at the touch he took her in his arms.

“Jacqueline,” he cried, “tell me that you love me.”

She lay very still, suddenly finding it good to be thus vanquished.

“Jacqueline,” he repeated, and bent his head to catch her words.

“You are a tyrant, but I am afraid I do.”

And then, his lips on hers, their world stood still.