The cape of a white fleece cloak fluttered in his face, and he turned and saw Miss Erith at his elbow.

Yellow-haired, a slender, charming thing in her white wind-blown coat, she stood leaning on the spray-wet rail close to his shoulder.

And with him it was suddenly as though he had known her for years—­as though he had always been aware of her beauty and her loveliness—­as though his eyes had always framed her—­his heart had always wished for her, and she had always been the sole and exquisite tenant of his mind.

“I had no idea that we were off Scotland,” he said—­“off Strathlone Head—­and so close in.  Why, I can see the cliff-flowers!”

She laid one hand lightly on his arm, listening; high and heavenly sweet above the rushing noises of the sea they heard the singing of shoreward sky-larks above the grey cliff of Glenark.

He began to tremble.  “That nightmare through which I’ve struggled,” he began, but she interrupted: 

“It is quite ended, Kay.  You are awake.  It is day and the world’s before you.”  At that he caught her slim hand in both of his: 

“Eve!  Eve!  You’ve brought me through death’s shadow!  You gave me back my mind!”

She let her hand rest between his.  At first he could not make out what her slightly moving lips uttered, and bending nearer he heard her murmur:  “Beside the still waters.”  The sea had become as calm as a pond.

And now the transport was losing headway, scarcely moving at all.  Forward and aft the gun-crews, no longer alert, lounged lazily in the sunshine watching a boat being loaded and swung outward from the davits.

“Is somebody going ashore?” asked McKay.

“We are,” said the girl.

“Just you and I, Eve?”

“Just you and I.”

Then he saw their luggage piled in the lifeboat.’

“This is wonderful,” he said.  “I have a house a few miles inland from Strathlone Head.”

“Will you take me there, Kay?”

Such a sense of delight possessed him that he could not speak.

“That’s where we must go to make our plans,” she said.  “I didn’t tell you in those dark hours we have lived together, because our minds were so far apart—­and I was fighting so hard to hold you.”

“Have you forgiven me—­you wonderful girl?”

His voice shook so that he could scarcely control it.  Miss Erith laughed.

“You adorable boy!” she said.  “Stand still while I unlace your life-belt.  You can’t travel in this.”

He felt her soft fingers at his throat and turned his face upward.  All the blue air seemed glittering with the sun-tipped wings of gulls.  The skylark’s song, piercingly sweet, seemed to penetrate his soul.  And, as his life-suit fell about him, so seemed to fall the heavy weight of dread like a shroud, dropping at his feet.  And he stepped clear—­took his first free step toward her—­as though between them there were no questions, no barriers, nothing but this living, magic light—­which bathed them both.