It was but one word; but by that word he knew that as he had never forgot, so he had not been forgotten.
He bent lower yet, till his lips touched her hand again.
"At last! I thought that we should never meet! And now—I have no words. To strive to pay my debt were hopeless; God grant the day may come when I can show you how I hold it. You saved my life; you shall command it as you will."
His words broke from his heart's depths, and in the rapid breathless tide of emotion, strongly felt and hard to utter; few women would have failed to read in them that, with his bold, keen, dauntless nature, self-reliant, danger-tested though it was, there went a faith that would be loyal to his of utter ruin, once pledged and given, and a tenderness passionate and exhaustless, through which he might be lured on to any belief, dashed down to any destruction. A dangerous knowledge; there are scarce any women to be trusted with it.
Silence fell between them for the moment, where she stood beside the scarlet roses of the fountain, with the heavy sloes perfume rising round, and at her feet, bowed low before her, the man whose life was owed to her by so vast a debt—stranger and un-
