to hope for, if he had ever dared to think of saying what he had really said.  He had been forced to what he had done, as a strong man is forced struggling against odds to the brink of a precipice, and he had found not death, but a strange new strength to live.  He had not found Heaven, but he had touched the gates of Paradise and heard the sweet clear voice of the angel within.  It was well for him that his hand had not been raised that afternoon to deal the one blow that would have decided his life.  It was well that it was the summer time and that when he had put the helm down to go about there had been no white squall seething along with its wake of snowy foam from a quarter of a mile to windward.  It would have been all over now and those great moments down there by the rocks would never have been lived.

“Through the arch, Ruggiero,” said San Miniato to him as the boat cleared the rocks of the landward needle.

“Let us go home,” said Beatrice, with a little impatience in her voice.  “I am so tired.”

Would she be tired of such a night if she loved the man beside her?  Ruggiero thought not, any more than he would ever be weary of being near her to steer the boat that bore her—­even for ever.

“It is so beautiful,” said San Miniato.

Beatrice said nothing, but made an impatient movement that betrayed that she was displeased.

“Home, Ruggiero,” said San Miniato’s voice.

“Make sail!” Ruggiero called out, he himself hauling out the mizzen.  A minute later the sails filled and the boat sped out over the smooth water, white-winged as a sea-bird under the great summer moon.

CHAPTER VIII.

It was late on the following morning when the Marchesa came out upon her curtained terrace, moving slowly, her hands hanging listlessly down, her eyes half closed, as though regretting the sleep she might be still enjoying.  Beatrice was sitting by a table, an open book beside her which she was not reading, and she hardly noticed her mother’s light step.  The young girl had spent a sleepless night, and for the first time since she had been a child a few tears had wet her pillow.  She could not have told exactly why she had cried, for she had not felt anything like sadness, and tears were altogether foreign to her nature.  But the unsought return of all the impressions of the evening had affected her strangely, and she felt all at once shame, anger and regret—­shame at having been so easily deceived by the play of a man’s face and voice, anger against him for the part he had acted, and regret for something unknown but dreamt of and almost understood, and which could never be.  She was too young and girlish to understand that her eyes had been opened upon the workings of the human heart.  She had seen two sights which neither man nor woman can ever forget, love and love’s counterfeit presentment, and both were stamped indelibly upon the unspotted page of her maiden memory.