She waited breathlessly for him to go on, her eyes on the tumbling waste of water. He remained quiet, motionless, and she turned toward him expectantly.
"I--I think I understand now," she admitted, "how all this occurred; but why--why were you so persistent? There--there must have been a reason more impelling than a vague suspicion?"
"There was--the most compelling impulse in the world."
"You mean faith in me?"
"Even more than that; love for you. Natalie, listen; what I have to say may sound strange, cruel even under such conditions as now surround us, but you force me to say them. I love you, have loved you all the time, without fully realizing exactly what it meant. There have been times when I have doubted you, when I could not wholly escape the evidence that you were also concerned personally in this fraud. I have endeavoured to withdraw from the case, to forget, and blot everything from memory. But something stronger than will prevented; I could not desert you; could not believe you were wilfully wrong. You understand what I mean."
"Yes," the words barely reaching him. "It was the other girl; she undermined your faith."
"That is the truth; yet how could it be, do you suppose? My very love should have enabled me to detect the difference. I can see now, thinking back, where the fraud was even apparent--in mood, temper, action--and yet at the time these made no such impression. Even Sexton never questioned her identity; in face, figure, dress the resemblance was absolutely perfect. Good heavens, but she is an actress!"
She touched his arm with her hand, and under the slight pressure he looked aside at her.
"You know now," she said softly, "and I know. All this is passed and gone between us. We are here alone, the sport of the waves, and I have no reason to be other than frank. I believe in you, Matthew West; in your honesty and manhood. You say you love me?"
"With all my heart and soul; it seems to me now I have always loved you--you came to me, the lady of my dreams."
Her eyes were wet with unshed tears, yet she smiled back into his face, her voice trembling as she answered.
"And I," she said slowly, "have had no thought but of you since our morning in the garden together. How far away that seems."
"You mean you love me?"
"Yes; I love you; there is no word stronger, but I would speak it--is that not enough?"
He held her in his arms, in spite of the trembling raft, tossed by the swell of the sea, and crushed her against him in the ardent strain of passion. An instant she held her head back, her eyes gazing straight into his; then, with sigh of content, yielded, and their lips met, and clung.