“You loved him, once?”

“Oh, no!  Oh, no!  Never!  I—­why, Pierre, until you came, I didn’t even know what love meant!  Once that ignorant, undisciplined girl I spoke of, thought she loved a boy.  She didn’t.  She loved the idea of love.  And once again, Pierre, because my life was so empty, and because I didn’t know any better, I thought I should be willing to marry somebody else.  I thought that somebody else could fill my life.  But now I know that could never be.  You are here.”

He looked at her with infinite tenderness.  There were things he, too, would have to tell her, by and by.  And he was sure that the woman whose coming little Denise had seemed to foreknow, would understand.  He said gravely: 

“Yes, we have found each other.  That is all that really matters.  Nothing, nobody else, counts with you and me.”  And then, of a sudden, he laughed happily:  “And, Beloved Lady, I do not know your name!  I can’t call you ‘Mrs. Riley,’ can I?  By what name, then, shall the one who loves you most call you?”

“Anne.”  And she asked eagerly:  “Do you like it?”

He started.  Anne!  Strange that the name that had been his chiefest unhappiness should now become his chiefest joy!  Strange that he hadn’t guessed Anne could be the most beautiful of all names for a woman!  Like it?  Of course he liked it!  Wasn’t it hers?

“Anne, you haven’t yet said when you will marry me.”

“Oh, but you are sure of that!” she parried.

“I am so sure of it that I am quite capable of taking you by the hair and dragging you off to the parson’s, if you try to make me wait.  Anne!  Remember that ever since I was that barefooted, lonely child I have been waiting for you.  My dear, I need you so greatly!”

She said passionately:  “You cannot need me as I need you.  You are yourself.  You couldn’t be anything else.  You were you before you ever saw me.  But I—­I couldn’t be my real self until you came and looked at me and kissed me.”

He felt humble, and reverent, and at the same time exultant.  When she said presently, “I must go now,” he released her reluctantly.  They walked hand in hand, pausing at the small headland beyond which the village came in sight.  She took both his hands and held them against her breast.

“You are my one man.  I love you so much that I am going to give my whole life into your hands, as fully and as freely as I shall some day give my spirit into the hands of God.  But, Pierre, there are those who have been very, very kind to me, those to whom I owe—­well, explanations.  When I have made those explanations and—­and settled my accounts,—­then all the rest of my life is yours.”

“You are very, very sure, Anne?” His voice was wistful.

“My love for you,” she said proudly, “is the one great reality.  I am surer of that than I have ever been of anything in this world.”  And she stood there looking at him with her heart in her eyes.  Of a sudden, with a little cry, she pulled his head down to her, kissed him upon the mouth, pushed him from her, and fled.