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He waited for a few seconds; then spoke, still kindly, but with a force that in a measure compelled her: "That is why I want you to tell me his name." She turned her face aside. "I I can't!" she said piteously. "Then I hold you to your engagement," said Lester Cheveril, with quiet determination. Her hands leapt in his. She threw him a quick uncertain glance. "You can't mean that!" she said.
"It's infernal," said the other gloomily, and relapsed into silence. "Going abroad?" Cheveril ventured presently. "Yes. Going to the other side of the world." Surliness had given place to depression in the boy's voice. Sympathy, albeit from an unknown quarter, moved him to confidence. "But it isn't that I mind," he said, a moment later.
The abandonment of the action was very young, and perhaps it was that very fact that made it so indescribably pathetic. To Lester Cheveril, leaning on the sea-wall, it appealed as strongly as the crying of a child. He glanced over his shoulder. The place was deserted. Then he deliberately dropped his cigarette-case over the wall and exclaimed: "Confound it!"
"There's the sea and the lighthouse," his companion told him curtly "nothing else." Cheveril smiled faintly to himself in the darkness. "Try one of these cigarettes," he said sociably. "I don't enjoy smoking alone." He was aware, as his unknown friend accepted the offer, that he would have infinitely preferred to refuse.
And as Cheveril had departed in his yacht to the Pacific very shortly after his proposal, there seemed small likelihood of the union taking place that year. Meanwhile, her long battle over, Evelyn prepared herself to enjoy her hard-earned peace. Her father no longer poured hurricanes of wrath upon her for her obduracy. Her mother's bitter reproaches had wholly ceased.
The marvel of the man's presence was still upon her, but the horror of death haunted her also. She would rather have been drowned outside on the howling shore than here. "The sea comes in at high tide," she murmured shakily. Lester Cheveril, crouching beside her, made undaunted reply. "Yes, I know. But it won't touch us. Don't be afraid!"
"Don't trouble," said Cheveril politely. "The steps are close by." He walked away at an easy pace and descended to the beach. The flicker of a match guided him to the searcher. As he drew near, the light went out, and the young man turned to meet him. "Here it is," he said gruffly. "Many thanks!" said Cheveril. "It's so confoundedly dark to-night. I scarcely expected to see it again."
He was the last person in the world to whom she would have voluntarily turned for help. "Don't be startled by what I am going to say," Cheveril said. "It may strike you as an eccentric suggestion, but there is nothing in it to alarm you. Young Willowby tells me that it will take him two years to make a home for you, and meanwhile your life is to be made a martyrdom on my account.
"Yes," said Cheveril. He spoke in a low voice, even with reverence, she thought. "We shall be out of this in an hour. It will light us home." "How wonderful!" she said, half involuntarily. Cheveril said no more; but the silence that fell between them was the silence of that intimacy which only those who have stood together before the great threshold of death can know.
"There is nothing to be ashamed of," he said. "I take all the responsibility, and it would give me very great pleasure to help you." "But I couldn't do such a thing!" she protested. "I couldn't!" "Listen!" said Cheveril. "I am off for a yachting trip in the Pacific in a week, and I give you my word of honour not to return for nine months, at least. Will that make it easier for you?"
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