The tide was low, the long lines of the sandbanks shone yellow in the sun – yellower for the pools of blue water left between them. Far off, where the low white streak marked the edge of the still retreating sea, little figures moved slowly along, pushing the shrimping-nets through the shallow water.

On one of the smooth wave-worn groins a girl sat sketching the village; her pink gown and red Japanese umbrella made a bright spot on the gold of the sand.

Further along the beach, under the end of the grass-grown sea-wall, a young man and woman basked in the August sun. Her sunshade was white, and so were her gown and the hat that lay beside her. Since her accession to fortune Rosamund Rainham had worn nothing but white.

“It is the prettiest wear in the world,” she had told Constance Grant; “and when you’re poor, it’s the most impossible. But now I can have a clean gown every day, and a clean conscience as well.”

“I’m not sure about the conscience,” Constance had answered with her demure smile. “Think of the millions of poor people.”

“Oh, bother!” Miss Rainham had laughed, not heartlessly, but happily. “Thank Heaven, I’ve enough to be happy myself and make heaps of other people happy too. And the first step is that no one’s to know I’m rich, so remember that we are two high-school teachers on a holiday.”

“I loathe play-acting,” Constance had said, but she had submitted, and now she sat sketching, and Rosamund in her white gown watched the seagulls and shrimpers from under the sea-wall of Lymchurch.

“And so your holiday’s over in three days,” she was saying to the young man beside her; “it’s been a good time, hasn’t it?”

He did not answer; he was piling up the pebbles in a heap, and always at a certain point the heap collapsed.

“What are you thinking of? Poems again?”

“I had a verse running in my head,” he said apologetically; “it has nothing to do with anything.”

“Write it down at once,” she said imperiously, and he obediently scribbled in his notebook, while she took up the work of building the stone heap – it grew higher under her light fingers.

“Read it!” she said, when the scribbling of the pencil stopped, and he read:

“Now the vexed clouds, wind-driven, spread wings of white,
Long leaning wings across the sea and land;
The waves creep back, bequeathing to our sight
The treasure-house of their deserted sand;
And where the nearer waves curl white and low,
Knee-deep in swirling brine the slow-foot shrimpers go.

Pale breadth of sand where clamorous gulls confer
Marked with broad arrows by their planted feet,
White rippled pools where late deep waters were,
And ever the white waves marshalled in retreat,
And the grey wind in sole supremacy
O’er opal and amber cold of darkening sky and sea.”

“Opal and amber cold,” she repeated; “it’s not like that now. It’s sapphire and gold and diamonds.”

“Yes,” he said; “but that was how it was last week – ”

“Before I came – ”

“Yes, before you came;” his tone put a new meaning into her words.

“I’m glad I brought good weather,” she said cheerfully, and the little stone heap rattled itself down under her hand.

“You brought the light of the world,” he said, and caught her hand and held it. There was a silence. A fisherman passing along the sea-wall gave them good-day. “What made you come to Lymchurch?” he said presently, and his hand lay lightly on hers. She hesitated, and looked down at her hand and his.

“I knew you were here,” she said. His eyes met hers. “I always meant to see you again some day. And you knew me at once. That was so nice of you.”

“You have not changed,” he said; “your face has not changed, only you are older, and – ”

“I’m twenty-two; you needn’t reproach me with it. Yours is the same to a month.”

He moved on his elbow a little nearer to her.

“Has it ever occurred to you,” he asked, looking out to sea, “that you and I were made for each other?”

“No; never.”

He looked out to sea still, and his face clouded heavily.

“Ah – no – don’t look like that, dear; it never occurred to me – I think I must have always known it somehow, only – ”

“Only what? – do you really? – only what?” A silence. Then, “Only what?” he asked again.

“Only I was so afraid it would never occur to you!”

There was no one on the wide, bare sands save the discreet artist – their faces were very near.

“We shall be very, very poor, I’m afraid,” he said presently.

“I can go on teaching.”

“No” – his voice was decided – “my wife shan’t work – at least not anywhere but in our home. You won’t mind playing at love in a cottage for a bit, will you? I shall get on now I’ve something to work for. Oh, my dear, thank God I’ve enough for the cottage! When will you marry me? We’ve nothing to wait for, no relations to consult, no settlements to draw up. All that’s mine is thine, lassie.”

“And all that’s mine – Oh! Stephen!”

For, with a scattering of shingle, a man dropped from the sea-wall two yards from them.

The situation admitted of no disguise, for Miss Rainham’s head was on Mr Dornington’s shoulder. They sprang up.

“Why, Stephen!” echoed Andrew, “this – this is good of you! You remember Rosamund? We have just found out that – ” But Rosamund had turned, and was walking quickly away over the sand.

Stephen filled a pipe and lighted it before he said: “You’ve made good use of your time, old man. I congratulate you.” His tone was cold.

“There is no reason why I should not make good use of my time,” Dornington answered, and his tone had caught the chill of the other’s.

“None whatever. You have secured the prize, and I congratulate you. Whether it’s fair to the girl is another question.”

In moments of agitation a man instinctively feels for his pipe. It was now Dornington’s turn to fill and light.

“Of course it’s your own affair,” said Guillemot, chafing at the silence, “but I think you might have given the heiress a chance. However, it’s each for himself, I suppose, and – ”

“Heiress?”

“Yes, the heiress – the Millionairess, if you prefer it. I’ve been looking into her affairs: it is just about a million.”

“Rather cheap chaff, isn’t it?”

“It’s a very lucky thing for you,” said Stephen savagely. “Perhaps I ought not to grudge it to you. But I must say, Dornington – I see we look at the thing differently – but I must say, I shouldn’t have cared to grab at such luck myself.”

Dornington had thrust his hands into his pockets, and stood looking at his friend.

“I see,” he said slowly. “And her fortune is really so much? I didn’t think it had been so much as that. Yes. Well, Guillemot, it’s no good making a row about it; I don’t want to quarrel with my best friend. Go along to my place, will you? Or stay: come and let me introduce you to Miss Grant, and you can walk up with her; she’ll show you where I live. I’m going for a bit of a walk.”

Five minutes later Stephen, in response to Rosamund’s beckoning hand at the window, was following Miss Grant up the narrow flagged path leading to the cottage which Rosamund had taken. And ten minutes later Andrew Dornington was striding along the road to the station with a Gladstone bag in his hands.

Stephen lunched at the cottage. The girls served the lunch themselves; they had no hired service in the little cottage. Rosamund exerted herself to talk gaily.

As the meal ended, a fair-haired child stood in the door that opened straight from the street into the sitting-room, after the primitive fashion of Lymchurch.

“’E gave me a letter for you,” said the child, and Rosamund took it, giving in exchange some fruit from the pretty disordered table.

“Excuse me,” she said, with the rose in her cheeks because she saw the hand-writing was the hand-writing she had seen in many pencilled verses. She read the letter, frowned, read it again. “Constance, you might get the coffee.”

Constance went out. Then the girl turned on her guest.

“This is your doing,” she said with a concentrated fury that brought him to his feet facing her. “Why did you come and meddle! You’ve told him I was rich – the very thing I didn’t mean him to know till – till he couldn’t help himself. You’ve spoilt everything! And now he’s gone – and he’ll never come back. Oh, I hope you will suffer for this some day. You will, if there’s any justice in the world!”

He looked as though he suffered for it even now, but when he spoke his voice was equable.

“I am extremely sorry,” he said, “but after all, there’s very little harm done. You should have warned me that you meant to play a comedy, and I would have taken any part you assigned me. However, you’ve succeeded. He evidently ‘loves you for yourself alone.’ Write and tell him to come back: he’ll come.”

“How little you know him,” she said, “after all these years! Even I know him better than that. That was why I pretended not to be rich. Directly I knew about the money I made up my mind to find him and try if I could make him care. I know it sounds horrid; I don’t mind, it’s true. And I had done it; and then you came. Oh, I hope I shall never see you again! I will never speak to you again! No, I don’t mean that – ” She hid her face in her hands.

“Rosamund, try to forgive me. I didn’t know, I couldn’t know. I will bring him back to you – I swear it! Only trust me.”

“You can’t,” she said; “it’s all over.”

“Let me tell you something. If you hadn’t had this money – but if you hadn’t had this money I should never have seen you. But I have thought of nothing but you ever since that day you came to the Temple. I don’t tell you this to annoy you, only to show you that I would do anything in the world to prevent you from being unhappy. Forgive me, dear! Oh, forgive me!”

“It’s no good,” she said; but she gave him her hand. When Constance Grant came back with the coffee, she found Mr Guillemot alone looking out of the window at the sunflowers and the hollyhocks.

“What is the matter?” she asked.

“I’ve made a fool of myself,” he said, forgetting, as he looked at her kind eyes, that three hours ago she was only a name to him.

“Could I do anything?”

“You’re her friend,” he said. “Miss Grant, I’m going down to the sea, if you could come down with me and let me talk – but I’ve no right to bother you.”

“I’ll come,” said Constance. “I’ll come by-and-by when I’ve cleared lunch away. It’s no bother. As you say, I’m her friend.”

III

Rosamund stayed on at the little house behind the sea-wall, and she wrote letters, long and many, which accumulated on the mantel-piece of the rooms in the Temple. Andrew found them there when he returned to town in the middle of October. The room was cheerless, tenantless, fireless. He lit the gas and looked through his letters. He did not dare to open those which came from her. There were bills, invitation cards, a returned manuscript or two, a cheque for a magazine article, and a letter in Stephen’s hand-writing. It was dated a fortnight earlier.

“Dear old Chap,” it ran, “I’m off to my father’s. I can’t bear it. I can’t face you or any one. I wish to God I’d never told you anything about Rosamund Rainham’s money. There isn’t any money: it was all in the Crystal Oil Co. No one had the least idea that it wasn’t good, but I feel as if I ought to have known. There’s a beggarly hundred or so in consols: that’s the end of her million. It wasn’t really my fault, of course. She doesn’t blame me. – Yours,

“Stephen Guillemot.”

Then he opened her letters – read them all – in the order of the dates on the postmarks, for even in love Andrew was an orderly man – read them with eyes that pricked and smarted. There were four or five of them. First, the frank pleading of affection, then the coldness of hurt pride and love; then, doubts, wonderings. Was he ill? Was he away? Would he not at least answer? Passionate longing, tender anxiety breathed in every word. Then came the last letter of all, written a fortnight ago:

“Dear Andrew, – I want you to understand that all is over between us. I know you wished it, and now I see you are right. I could never have been anything to you but your loving friend,

“Rosamund.”

He read it through twice; it was a greater shock to him than Stephen’s letter had been. Then he understood. The Millionairess might stoop to woo a poor lover whose pride had fought with and conquered his love: the girl with only a “beggarly hundred in consols” had her pride too.

The early October dusk filled the room. Andrew caught up the bag he had brought with him, slammed the door, and blundered down the stairs. He caught a passing hansom in Fleet Street and the last train to Lymchurch.

A furious south-wester was waiting for him there. He could hardly stand against it – it blew and tore and buffeted him, almost prevailing against him as he staggered down the road from the station. The night was inky black, but he knew his Lymchurch every inch, and he fought it manfully, though every now and then he was fain to cling to a gateway or a post, and hold on till the gust had passed. Thus, breathless and dishevelled, his tie under his left ear, his hat battered in, his hair in crisp disorder, he reached at last the haven of the little porch of the house under the sea-wall.

Rosamund herself opened the door; her eyes showed him two things – her love and her pride. Which would be the stronger? He remembered how the question had been answered in his own case, and he shivered as she took his hand and led him into the warm, lamp-lighted room. The curtains were drawn; the hearth swept; a tabby cat purred on the rug; a book lay open on the table: all breathed of the sober comfort of home. She sat down on the other side of the hearth and looked at him. Neither spoke. It was an awkward moment.

Rosamund broke the silence.

“It is very friendly of you to come and see me,” she said. “It is very lonely for me now. Constance has gone back to London.”

“She has gone back to her teaching?”

“Yes; I wanted her to stay, but – ”

“I’ve heard from Stephen. He is very wretched; he seems to think it is his fault.”

“Poor, dear boy!” She spoke musingly. “Of course it wasn’t his fault. It all seems like a dream, to have been so rich for a little while, and to have done nothing with it except,” she added with a laugh and a glance at her fur-trimmed dress, “to buy a most extravagant number of white dresses. How awfully tired you look, Andrew! Go and have a wash – the spare room’s the first door at the top of the stairs – and I’ll get you some supper.”

When he came down again, she had laid a cloth on the table and was setting out silver and glass.

“Another relic of my brief prosperity,” she said, touching the forks and spoons. “I’m glad I don’t have to eat with nickel-plated things.”

She talked gaily as they ate. The home atmosphere of the room touched Dornington. Rosamund herself, in her white gown, had never appeared so fair and desirable. And but for his own mad pride he might have been here now, sharing her pretty little home life with her – not as her guest, but as her husband. He flushed crimson. Blushing was an old trick of his – one of those that had earned him his feminine nickname of Dora, and in the confusion his blushing brought him, he spoke.

“Rosamund, can you ever forgive me?”

“I forgive you from my heart,” she said, “if I have anything to forgive.”

But in her tone was the resentment of a woman who does not forgive. Yet he had been right. He had sacrificed himself; and if he had chosen to suffer? But what about the blue lines under her dear eyes, the hollows in her dear face?

“You have been unhappy,” he said.

“Well,” she laughed, “I wasn’t exactly pleased to lose my fortune.”

“Dear,” he said desperately, “won’t you try to forgive me? It seemed right. How could I sacrifice you to a penniless – ”

“I’d enough for both – or thought I had,” she said obstinately.

“Ah, but don’t you see – ”

“I see that you cared more for not being thought mercenary by Stephen than – ”

“Forgive me!” he pleaded; “take me back.”

“Oh no” – she tossed her bright head – “Stephen might think me mercenary; I couldn’t bear that. You see you are richer than I am now. How much did you tell me you made a year by your writing? How can I sacrifice you to a penniless – ”

“Rosamund, do you mean it?”

“I do mean it. And, besides – ”

“What?”

“I don’t love you any more.” The bright head drooped and turned away.

“I have killed your love. I don’t wonder. Forgive me for bothering you. Good-bye!”

“What are you going to do?” she asked suddenly.

“Oh, don’t be afraid, nothing desperate. Only work hard and try to forgive you.”

“Forgive me? You have nothing to forgive.”

“No, nothing – if you had left off loving me? Have you? Is it true?”

“Good-bye!” she said. “You are staying at the ‘Ship’?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t let’s part in anger. I shall be on the sea-wall in the morning. Let’s part friends, then.”

In the morning Andrew went into the fresh air. The trees, still gold in calmer homes, stood almost leafless in wild, windy Lymchurch. He stood in the sunlight, and in spite of himself some sort of gladness came to him through the crisp October air. Then the ping of a bicycle bell sounded close behind him, and there was Stephen.

They shook hands, and Stephen’s eyebrows went up.

“Is it all right?” he asked. “I knew you’d come here when I came home last night and found you’d had my letter.”

“No; it’s not all right. She won’t have me.”

“Why?”

“Pride or revenge, or something. Don’t let’s talk about it.”

“All right. I want some breakfast; we left town by the 7.20. I’m starving.”

“Who are ‘we’?”

“Miss Grant and I. I thought Rosamund would be wanting a chaperon or a bridesmaid, or something, so I brought her and her bicycle.”

“Always thoughtful,” said Andrew, with something like a laugh.

Presently, strolling along the sea-wall they met the two girls. Rosamund looked radiant. Where was the pale, hollow-eyed darling of last night? The wind that ruffled her brown hair had blown roses into her cheeks.

“Do you forgive me?” whispered Stephen when they met.

“That depends,” she answered.

They all walked on together, and presently Stephen and Constance fell behind.

Then Rosamund spoke.

“You really think I ought to crush my pride, and – and – ”

Hope laughed in Andrew’s face – laughed and fled – for he looked in the face of Miss Rainham, and there was no sign of yielding in it.

“Yes,” he said almost sullenly.

“That is as much as to say that you were wrong.”

“I – perhaps I was wrong. What does it matter?”

“It matters greatly. Suppose I had my money now would you run away from me?”

“I – I suppose I should act as I did before.”

“Then you don’t care for me any more than you did?”

“I love you a thousand times more,” he cried, turning angry, haggard eyes to her. “Yes, I believe I was wrong. Nothing would send me from you now but yourself – ”

She clapped her hands.

“Then stay,” she said, “for it’s a farce, and my money is as safe as houses.”

He scowled at her.

“It’s all a trick? You’ve played with me? Good-bye, and God forgive you!”

He turned to go, but Constance, coming up from behind them, caught his arm.

“Don’t be such an idiot,” she said. “She had nothing to do with it. She thought her money was gone. You don’t suppose she would have played such a trick even to win your valuable affections. You don’t deserve your luck, Mr Dornington.”

Rosamund was looking at him with wet eyes, and her lips trembled.

“Constance only told me this morning,” she said. “She and Stephen planned it, to get you – to make me – to – to – ”

“And then she nearly spoilt it all by being as silly as you were. Whatever does it matter which of you has the money?”

“Nothing,” said Rosamund valiantly; “I see that plainly. Don’t you, Andrew?”

“I see nothing but you, Rosamund,” he said, and they turned and walked along the sea-wall, hand in hand, like two children.

“That’s all right,” said Stephen; “but, by Jove, I’ve had enough of playing Providence and managing other people’s affairs.”

“She was very sweet about it,” said Constance, walking on.

“Well she may be; she has her heart’s desire. But it was not easy. What a blessing she is so unbusiness-like! I couldn’t have done it but for you.”

“I am very glad to have been of some service,” said Constance demurely.

“I couldn’t have got on without you. I can’t get on without you ever again.”

“But that’s nonsense,” said Miss Grant.

“You won’t make me, Constance? There’s no confounded money to come between us.”