“Good morning, Miss Shipton.  Are you going home?”

“Yes!  I suppose you are going to your house.”

“Yes,” and Robert walked slowly back along the way he had come, Miss Shipton accompanying him, for it was the way home.  When they came to the corner, however, they both, without noticing it, went eastward, and not to the town.

“Should you like to be a sailor, Mr. Trevanion?” said Miss Shipton, catching sight of the fishing vessels over the low sea-beaten hedge.

“No, I think not.  At least it would depend——­”

“Depend on what?”

“I should not like to be away for weeks during the North Sea fishing, if——­”

“If it were very cold?”

“Oh, no; that is not what I meant—­if I had a wife at home who cared for me and watched for me!”

“Really, Mr. Trevanion, if you were a fisherman you would not take things so seriously.  It would all come as a matter of course.  Yon would be busy with your nets, and have no time to think of her.”

“But she might think of me.”

“Oh, well, perhaps she might now and then; but she would have her house to look after, and all her friends would be near her.”

“On stormy nights,” said Robert, musingly.

“How very serious you are!  Such a lovely day, too—­a nice time to be talking about stormy nights!  Of course there are stormy nights, but the boats can run into harbour, and if they cannot, the men are not always drowned.”

“Certainly not; how foolish, and to think of coming home after five or six weeks on the Doggerbank—­oh me!  But here is the very rock where we sat the other morning.  I am sure you are tired, let us sit down again; your hair is not dry yet.”

They sat down.

“It is quite wet still,” and Robert ventured to touch it, putting his hand underneath it.

“An awful plague it is!  Horrid sandy-coloured stuff, and such a nuisance in the water!  I think I shall have it cut short.”

“I am sure you won’t.  Sandy-coloured! it is beautiful.”

Miss Shipton tossed her parasol about, shaking her hair loose from his fingers.

“When it is spread out in the sunshine,” said Robert, as he separated a little piece of it between his fingers, “the sun shows its varying shades.  How lovely they are!” His hand went a little higher, till it touched the back of her neck.

“On stormy nights.—­on stormy nights,” he almost whispered, “I should think of you if you did not think of me.”

The hand went a little farther under the hair, his head inclined to it, and he was intoxicated with its own rich scent mingled with, that of the sweet sea-water.  He trembled with emotion from head to foot.  What is there in life like this?  Old as creation, ever new; and under the almost tropical sun, fronting the ocean, in the full heat of youth, he drew her head to his.  She yielded, and in a moment his