To give without stint was the impulse of her passionate, Southern nature, and she gave freely, royally, that night.  The magic that ran in the veins of both was too compelling to be resisted.  The girl, with her half-awakened soul, the man, with his fiery thirst for beauty, were caught in the great current that sweeps like a tidal wave around the world, and it bore them swiftly, swiftly, whither neither he in his restlessness nor she in her in experience realised or cared.  If the sound of the breakers came to them from afar they heeded it not.  They were too far away to matter as yet, and Knight had steered a safe course for himself in troubled seas before.  As for Columbine, she knew only the rapture of love triumphant, and tasted perfect safety in the holding of her lover’s arms.  He had won her with scarcely a struggle, and she gloried with an ecstasy that was in its way sublime in the completeness of her surrender.  On such a night as that it seemed to her that the whole world lay at her feet, and she knew no fear.

The still pool slept in the moonlight, a lake of silver, unspeakably calm.  Beyond the outstretched blade of rock the great waters rose and rose.  The murmur of them had swelled to a roar.  The splash of them mounted higher and ever higher.  Suddenly a crest of foam gleamed like a tongue of lightning at the point of the curve.  The pool stirred as if awakening.  The moonlight on its surface was shivered in a thousand ripples.  They broke in a succession of tiny wavelets against the encircling rocks.

Another silver crest appeared, burst in thunder, and in a moment the pool was flooded with tossing water.

“Do you see that?” whispered Columbine.  “It is like my life.”

They stood together under the frowning cliff and watched the wonder of the pool’s awakening.  Knight’s arm held her close pressed to his side.  He could feel the beating of her heart.  She stood with her face upturned to his and all the glory of love’s surrender shining in her eyes.

He caught his breath as he looked at her.  He stooped and kissed the red, red lips that gave so generously.  “Is my love as the rising tide to you, sweet?” he murmured.

“It is more!” she answered passionately.  “It is more!  It is the tidal wave that comes so seldom—­maybe only once in a lifetime—­and carries all before it.”

He pressed her closer.  “My passion-flower!” he said.  “My queen!”

He kissed the throbbing whiteness of her throat, the loose clusters of her hair.  He laid his hot face against her neck, and held it so, not breathing.  Her arms stretched upwards, clasping him.  She was panting—­panting as one in deep waters.

“I love you!  I love you!” she whispered tensely.  “Oh, how I love you!”

Again there came the thunder of the surf.  The waters of the pool leapt as if a giant hand had churned them.  The foam from beyond the reef overspread them like snow.  The whole world became full of the sound of surging waters.