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“All the time—every minute!”

“And to-morrow, while I am in the city?”

“Yes!”

“And Monday?”

“Then you will come back to me!”

He strained her to him in the white sunlight, and kissed her again, on the lips and forehead and hands, and she clung to him, lifting her face to him eagerly and passionately.

Margaret stood watching the firm-knit figure as it crossed the sand space. She saw the lift of his lithe shoulders as he pulled himself up the bank, saw his form splashed against the sky, saw the flutter of his handkerchief as he flung her a last signal.

She waved her hand in return, and he disappeared.

Then she ran to a slant spile rising lonely from the sand, and sank down quivering. It seemed to her as if she could bear no more joy; her body ached with it. She threw up her hands and laughed aloud in sheer ecstasy.

Then she remembered that she had left her book in the grove, and she stumbled up and walked back slowly, smiling and humming an air as she went along.

The first shade of the dimming afternoon lay under the trees as she climbed again to the little clearing, and the sunbeams glanced obliquely from the crooked oak branches. The air was very still and freighted only with the soft swish of the ebb-tide and the clean fragrance of balsam. Her book lay open and face down on the plank seat. She picked it up and sat down, leaning back.