‘And how is Phoebe, Giles?’

‘Oh, first-rate,’ he answered cheerfully; ’she likes her new couch much better than the bed.  I tell her if she goes on improving like this we shall have her in the next room before Easter.  By the bye, Ursula, have you digested the contents of my last letter?  Shall we go to the Pyrenees to spend our honeymoon?  It will be too early for Switzerland; we might go later on, or to the Italian lakes.’

‘Anywhere with you, Giles,’ I whispered; and he gave me silent thanks for that pretty speech.

He did not say any more for a little time, and I stood by him watching the dark, wintry sea.  Once my life had been dark and wintry too, but how mercifully I had been drawn out of the deep waters and brought to this dear haven of rest!  As I crept nearer to Giles he seemed to utter my unspoken thought.

’I am very happy to-night, Ursula, I have been thinking as I travelled down what it will be to me to have you always near me, to share my work and life.  I am so glad you love Gladwyn so dearly.’

‘Love Gladwyn,—­your home, Giles:  is there anything strange in that?’

’No, dear, perhaps not; but I like to hear you say so.  There will not be a wish of yours ungratified if I can help it.  I mean to spoil you dreadfully, Ursula.’

I told him, smiling, that I was not afraid of this threat, and just then Max’s voice interrupted us: 

’Little she-bear, do you know this is dreadfully imprudent?  Is this the way Hamilton means to take care of you?’

‘Wait a moment, Ursula,’ whispered Giles.  ’Do you hear that ballad-singer in the square?’ A voice clear and shrill seemed to float to us in the darkness:  ‘Sweet and low, sweet and low, wind of the western sea,’ she sang.  The waves seemed to splash in harmonious accompaniment; the lights were flickering, the carriages rolling under the faint starlight.  I saw Giles’s face—­as I loved to see it—­grave, thoughtful, and satisfied.

‘After all,’ he said, as though answering some inward questioning, ’a man cannot know what his life will bring him.  Do you remember what Robert Browning says: 

“What o’ the way to the end?—­The end crowns all.”

The end crowns all to me, Ursula.’  And Giles’s deep-set eyes gave me no doubt of his meaning.