“As God hears, it is the truth.”

“Then,” she paused, “I am happier than I thought it possible I should ever be in this life!”

“And you forgive me?”

“There is nothing to forgive.”

“That gives me courage to go on,” he said.  “Do you remember,” he put his hand over hers as he spoke, and they both went back in thought to the time he had laid his hand over hers on the fallen tree, the night of their first meeting, “do you remember, Katrine, that when an alliance is to be arranged for a great queen, it is she who must indicate her choice and her willingness.  You have become that, Katrine, a great queen!  I’m asking, with more humility in my heart than you can ever know, that you choose—­me!”

As she looked at him, her eyes were incredulous.  “Don’t let us talk of such a thing,” she said, abruptly, turning her small hand upward to meet his in a friendly clasp.

“But, Katrine, it is the only thing in the world I care to talk about.  Oh,” he said, “I know how hard it is for you, that you are going to make it hard for me, that you are not going to believe me, nor in me.  But, whether you believe it or not, it is the white truth I tell you, that ever since the first night I saw you I loved you, and wanted you for my wife.”

She sat on the brown rocks, her knees clasped in her slender arms, looking through the sea-mist at the sun going down behind the Magnolia Hills.

“Don’t let us talk of it,” she said, decisively; “the thing is utterly impossible.  Tell me about yourself instead:  the new railroad; the work; and Dermott McDermott.”  He turned, looking up at her curiously before answering.

“The last four years of my life have contained something overmuch of Dermott McDermott—­” And then, the animosity gone from him, “Katrine,” he cried, “in Heaven’s name, what did I ever do to him?  He seems to spend his time trying to circumvent my plans.  He hates me so that it seems”—­he waited for an appropriate word—­“funny,” he ended, with a laugh.  “I have sometimes thought he was in love with you.  Is he in love with you, Katrine?”

“Tell me about the railroad,” she said, taking no note whatever of his question.  “I have heard many things of it.”

“Well,” he began, “there were many things to hear.  One by one the men who had pledged themselves ‘went back on me,’ as the Street phrase is, which brought out all the obstinacy in me.  I built it myself.  It’s a success, and it’s lucky,” he ended, “for if it weren’t I don’t know where I should have ended in a money way.  I was desolate and, as you told me cheerfully in one of the letters to the Great Unknown, ’full of ignorances and narrow-mindedness.’  There was never anything better came to me, save one, than the work.  I think it has made me better.  I hope so.”

“It’s queer, queer, queer, this little world, isn’t it?” she demanded, abruptly.

“It is, indeed.”

“Here are we, together again, after many years, talking about ourselves, just as we did in those other days.”