All at once the pall of mist was rent in front of them with dramatic suddenness, and Fortuné had a momentary glimpse of something that looked like a great white wing.
"Was that a sail?" asked Raymonde quietly, who had seen it too.
"The sloop, as I live!" cried her lover, starting up. "Pray God she does not run us down!" He shouted lustily, then threw himself again on the tiller.
But the damp white veil enclosed them once more. His shouts seemed to return upon themselves. Raymonde sat, her chin on her hand, on a thwart. He had never seen anyone so calm.
And then, gradually, the curtain of mist began to part a little on their left, and to draw upwards like the curtain of a theatre. And slowly, as on a stage, there came into sight the rock front of Guernsey, with its fall to sea-level, the sun catching the windows of St. Peter Port, and the white sails of theCormorant, close reefed, about half a mile away.
Steadying the tiller against his body, Fortuné pulled out a sodden handkerchief and waved vigorously. Raymonde watched, not the plunging progress of the sloop, but her lover. And, as the mist melted in all directions from about them, the lovely, treacherous, baffled sea of the Channel Islands began to be blue again with the beguiling laughter that hides a hundred graves.
"She is putting about—she has seen us!" said La Vireville, lowering his arm.
Then, and then only, did Raymonde de Guéfontaine show the whole of her heart. For she cast herself sobbing on her lover's breast, clinging to him as she had not clung during all the stress of their hour of anguish.
"Fortuné, Fortuné, God is good! I could not have borne to die to-day—to lose you so soon! I love you better than my soul. . . . I have always loved you—always, always. . . ."
He strained her closer to him, seeing nothing but her wet eyes that looked into his at last.
"You are the woman I have waited for all my life! I knew it before, but now . . . a thousand times more clearly!"
And as the sloop, shaking out her canvas, bore gallantly towards them, his lips, salt with the brine of the just-weathered death, sealed on hers the knowledge of a happiness whose full security those very waves had taught them, never to be in question again.
THE END
PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBS LTD., EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND
Printing errors have been corrected as follows: "rythmical" changed to "rhythmical" on p. 69; "everyone brought conviction" changed to "every one brought conviction" on p. 164; inverted commas added after "fivepence" on p. 279 and after "to sleep a little" on p. 289. Otherwise, inconsistencies and possible errors have been preserved.