A full mile from the village, along the ocean sh.o.r.e, a stream came down from under a cliff, a stream, as Rachael and investigating children had often proved to their own satisfaction, that rose in a small but eminently satisfactory cave. The storm had washed several great smooth logs of driftwood into the cave, and beyond them to-day there was such a gurgling and churning going on that Rachael, eager not to miss any effect of the storm, stepped cautiously inside.

The augmented little river was three times its usual size, and was further made unmanageable by the impeding logs swept in by the high tide. Straw and weeds and rubbish of every description choked its course, and little foaming currents and backwaters almost filled the cave with their bubbling and swirling.

Rachael, with a few casual pushes of a st.u.r.dy little shoe, accomplished such surprising results in freeing and directing the stream that she fell upon it in sudden serious earnest, grasping a long pole the better to push obstructing matters aside, and growing rosy and breathless over her self-imposed and senseless undertaking.

She had just loosened a whole tangle of wreckage, and had straightened herself up with a long, triumphant "Ah-h!" of relief, as the current rushed it away, when a shadow fell over the mouth of the cave. Looking about in quick, instinctive fear, she saw Warren Gregory smiling at her.

For only one second she hesitated, all girlhood's radiant shyness in her face. Then she was in his arms, and clinging to him, and for a few minutes they did not speak, eyes and lips together in the wild rapture of meeting.

"Oh, Greg--Greg--Greg!" Rachael laughed and cried and sang the words together. "When did you come, and how did you get here? Tell me--tell me all about it!" But before he could begin to answer her their eager joy carried them both far away from all the conversational landmarks, and again they had breath only for monosyllables, instinct only to cling to each other.

"My girl, my own girl!" Warren Gregory said. "Oh, how I've missed you--and you're more beautiful than ever--did you know it? More beautiful even than I remembered you to be, and that was beautiful enough!"

"Oh, hush!" she said, laughing, her fingers over the mouth that praised her, his arm still holding her tight.

"I'll never hush again, my darling! Never, never in all the years we spend together! I am going to tell you a hundred times a day that you are the most beautiful, and the dearest--Oh, Rachael, Rachael, shall I tell you something? It's October! Do you know what that means?"

"Yes, I suppose I do!" She laughed, and colored exquisitely, drawing herself back the length of their linked arms.

"Do you know what you're going to BE in about thirty-six hours?"

"Now--you embarra.s.s me! Was--was anything settled?"

"Shall you like being Mrs. Gregory?"

"Greg--" Tears came to her eyes. "You don't know how much!" she said in a whisper.

They sat down on a great log, washed silver white with long years of riding unguided through the seas, and all the wonderful world of blue sky and white sand might have been made for them.

Rachael's hand lay in her lover's, her glorious eyes rarely left his face. Browned by his summer of travel, she found him better than ever to look upon; hungry after these waiting months, every tone of his voice held for her a separate delight.

"Did you ever dream of happiness like this, Rachael?"

"Never--never in my wildest flights. Not even in the past few months!"

"What--didn't trust me?"

"No, not that. But I've been rebuilding, body and soul. I didn't think of the future or the past. It was all present."

"With me," he said, "it was all future. I've been counting the days. I've not done that since I was at school! Rachael, do you remember our talk the night after the Berry Stokes' dinner?"

"Do I remember it?"

"Ah, my dear, if anyone had said that night that in six months we would be sitting here, and that you would have promised yourself to me! You don't know what my wife is going to mean to me, my dearest. I can't believe it yet!"

"It is going to mean everything in life to me," she said seriously. "I mean to be the best wife a man ever had. If loving counts--"

"Do you mean that?" he said eagerly. "Say it--do you mean that you love me?"

"Love you?" She stood up, pressing both hands over her heart as if there were real pain there. For a few paces she walked away from him, and, as he followed her, she turned upon him the extraordinary beauty of her face transfigured with strong emotion.

"Greg," she said quietly, "I didn't know there was such love! I've heard it called fire and pain and restlessness, but this thing is ME! It is burning in me like flame, it is consuming me. To be with you"--she caught his wrist with one hand, and with her free hand pointed out across the smiling ocean--"to be with you and KNOW you were mine, I could walk straight out into that water, and end it all, and be glad--glad--glad of the chance! I loved you yesterday, but what is this to-day, when you have kissed me, and held me in your arms!" Her voice broke on something like a sob, but her eyes were smiling. "All my life I've been asleep," said Rachael. "I'm awake now--I'm awake now! I begin to realize how helpless one is-- to realize what I should have done if you hadn't come--"

"My darling," Gregory said, his arms about her "what else--feeling as we feel--could I have done?"

Held in his embrace, she rested her hands upon his shoulders, and looked wistfully into his eyes.

"It is as WE feel, isn't it?" she said. "I mean, it isn't only me?

You--you love me?"

Looking down at her dropped, velvety lashes, feeling the warm strong beat of her heart against his, holding close as he did all her glowing and fragrant beauty, Warren Gregory felt it the most exquisite moment of his life. Her youth, her history, her wonderful poise and sureness so intoxicatingly linked with all a girl's unexpected shyness and adorable uncertainties, all these combined to enthrall the man who had admired her for many years and loved her for more than one.

"Love you?" he asked, claiming again the lips she yielded with such a delicious widening of her eyes and quickening of breath.

"You see, Warren," she said presently, "I'm not a girl. I give myself to you with a knowledge and a joy no girl could possibly have. I don't want to coquette and delay. I want to be your wife, and to learn your faults, and have you learn mine, and settle down into harness--one year, five years--ten years married! Oh, you don't know how I LONG to be ten years married. I shan't mind a bit being nearly forty. Forty--doesn't it sound SETTLED, and sedate-- and that's what I want. I--I shall love getting gray, and feeling that you and I don't care so much about going places, don't you know? We'll like better just being home together, won't we? We're older than most people now, aren't we?"

He laughed aloud at the bright face so enchantingly young in its restored beauty. He had expected to find her charming, but in this new phase of girlishness, of happiness, she was a thousand times more charming than he had dreamed. It was hard to believe that this eager girl in a striped blue and yellow and purple skirt, and rough white crash hat, was the bored, the remote, the much-feared Mrs. Clarence Breckenridge. Something free and sweet and virginal had come back to her, or been born in her. She was like no phase of the many phases in which he had known her; she was a Rachael who had never known the sordid, the disillusioning side of life.

Even her seriousness had the confident, eager quality of youth, and her gayety was as pure as a child's. She had cast off the old sophistication, the old recklessness of speech; she was not even interested in the old a.s.sociates. The world for her was all in him and their love for each other, and she walked back to Quaker Bridge, at his side, too wholly swept away from all self- consciousness to know or to care that they were at once the target for all eyes.

A wonderful day followed, many wonderful days. Doctor Gregory's great touring car and his livened man were at Mrs. Dimmick's door when they got back, an incongruous note in little Quaker Bridge, still gasping from the great storm.

"Your car?" Rachael said. "You drove down?"

"Yesterday. I put up at Valentine's--George Valentine's, you know, at Clark's Hills."

"Oh, that's my nice lady--gray haired, and with three children?"

Rachael said eagerly. "Do you know her?"

"Know her? Valentine is my closest a.s.sociate. They meet us in town to-morrow: he's to be best man. You'll have to have them to dinner once a month for the rest of your life!"

The picture brought her happy color, the shy look he loved.

"I'm glad, Greg. I like her immensely!"

They were at the car; she must flush again at the chauffeur's greeting, finding a certain grave significance, a certain acceptance, in his manner.

"Wife and baby well, Martin?"

"Very well, thank you, Mrs. Breckenridge."

"Still in Belvedere Hills?"

"Well, just at present, yes, Madam."

"You see, I am looking for suitable quarters for all hands,"

Doctor Gregory said, his laugh drowning hers, his eyes feasting on her delicious confusion. She was aware that feminine eyes from the house were watching her. Presently she had kissed Mrs. Dimmick good-bye. Warren had put his man in the tonneau; he would take the wheel himself for the three hours' run into town.

"Good-bye, my dear!" said the old lady, adding with an innocent vacuity of manner quite characteristic of Quaker Bridge. "Let me know when the weddin's goin' to be!"