‘No, Winifred,’ said I, ’the time is now, and the place is here—­here on this very spot where, once on a time, you said “certumly” when a little lover asked your hand.  It is now and here, Winifred, that I will say what I have to say.’

‘And what is that, sir?’ said Winifred, much perplexed and disturbed.

’I have to say, Winifred, that the man does not live and never has lived,’ said I, with suppressed vehemence, who loved a woman as I love you.’

Oh, sir! oh, Henry!’ returned Winifred, trembling, then standing still and whiter than the moon.  ’And the reason why no man has ever loved a woman as I love you, Winifred, is because your match, or anything like your match, has never trod the earth before.’

’Oh, Henry, my dear Henry! you must not say such things to me, your poor Winifred.’

‘But that isn’t all that I swore I’d say to you, Winifred.’

‘Don’t say any more—­not to-night, not to-night.’

’What I swore I would ask you, Winifred, is this:  Will you be Henry’s wife?’

She gave one hysterical sob, and swayed till she nearly fell on the sand, and said, while her face shone like a pearl,

‘Henry’s wife!’

She recovered herself and stood and looked at me; her lips moved, but I waited in vain—­waited in a fever of expectation—­for her answer.  None came.  I gazed into her eyes, but they now seemed rilled with visions—­visions of the great race to which she belonged—­visions in which her English lover had no place.  Suddenly, and for the first time, I felt that she who had inspired within me this all-conquering passion, though the penniless child of a drunken organist, was a daughter of Snowdon—­a representative of the Cymric race that was once so mighty, and is still more romantic in its associations than all others.  Already in the little talk I had had with her I began to guess what I realised before the evening was over, that owing to the influence of the English lady, Miss Dalrymple, who had lodged at the cottage with her, she was more than my own equal in culture, and could have held her own with almost any girl of her own age in England.  It was only in her subjection to Cymric superstitions that she was benighted.

‘Winnie,’ I murmured, ‘what have you to say?’

After a while her eyes seemed to clear of the visions, and she said,

’What changes have come upon us both, Henry. since that childish betrothal on the sands!’

‘Happy changes for one of the child-lovers,’ I said—­’happy changes for the one who was then a lonely cripple shut out from all sympathy save that which the other child-lover could give.’

’And yet you then seemed happy, Henry—­happy with Winnie to help you up the gangways.  And how happy Winnie was!  But now the child-lover is a cripple no longer:  he is very, very strong—­he is so strong that he could carry Winnie up the gangways in his arms, I think.’