He stopped.  He could not go on.  He lifted her up to him, and their lips met.  Years ago he had kissed her under the mistletoe; the kiss that he gave her now was a pledge for all the years to come.

They were late for supper.  Jane relieved her mind to the Admiral and his guests.  “She had a gentleman here this afternoon for tea, and neither of them ate anything.  And now there’s another gentleman, and the rolls are spoiling.”

“You can serve supper, Jane,” the Admiral told her; “they can eat when they come.”

When they came, Becky’s cheeks were as red as her cape.  As she swept within the radius of the candle-light, Archibald Cope, who had risen at her entrance, knew what had happened.  Her eyes were like stars.  “Did Jane scold about us?” she asked, with a quick catch of her breath; “it was so lovely—­with the moon.”

Back of her was young Randy—­Randy of the black locks, of the high-held head and Indian profile, Randy, with his air of Conqueror.

“I’ve told them all about you,” Becky said, “and they have read your story.  Will you please present him properly, Grandfather, while I go and fix my hair?”

She came back very soon, slim and childish in her blue velvet smock, her hair in that bronze wave across her forehead, her eyes still lighted.

She sat between her grandfather and Archibald.

“So,” said Cope softly, under cover of the conversation, “it has happened?”

“What has happened?”

“The happy ending.”

“Oh—­how did you know?”

“As if the whole world wouldn’t know just to look at you.”

The Randy of the supper table at “The Whistling Sally” was a Randy that Becky had never seen.  Success had come to him and love.  There was the ring of it in his young voice, the flush of it on his cheeks.  He was a man, with a man’s future.

He talked of his work.  “If I am a bore, please tell me,” he said, “but it is rather a fairy-tale, you know, when you’ve made up your mind to a hum-drum law career to find a thing like this opening out.”

Becky sat and listened.  Her eyes were all for her lover.  Already she thought of him at King’s Crest, writing for the world, with her money making things easy for him, but not spoiling the simplicity of their tastes.  If she thought at all of George Dalton, it was to find the sparkle and shine of his splendid presence dimmed by Randy’s radiance.

“I hate to say that he is—­charming,” Cope complained.

He was a good sport, and he wanted Becky to be happy.  But it was not easy to sit there and see those two—­with the pendulum swinging between them of joy and dreams, and the knowledge of a long life together.

“Why should it be?” he asked Louise, as he stood beside her, later, on their own little porch which overlooked the sea; “those two—­did you see them?  While I——­”

Louise laid her hand on his shoulder.  “Yes.  I think it is something like this, Arch.  They’ve got to live it out, and life isn’t always going to be just to-night for them.  And perhaps in the years together they may lose some of their dreams.  They’ve got to grow old, and you, you’ll go out—­with all—­your dreams——­”