She met no one by the way.  It was nearing the hour for the evening meal, nearing the hour when Mrs. Peck usually entered her room with the daily offering of flowers that filled it with orange fragrance.  Mrs. Peck was not very fond of that particular task, though she never expressed her reluctance.  Well, she would not have it to accomplish tonight.

A bare-legged, blue-jerseyed figure was moving in a bent attitude along the slope that overlooked Rufus’s cottage and the Spear Point.  The girl stood a moment gazing out over the curving reef as if she had not seen it.  The pool was smooth as a mirror, and reflecting the drifting clouds.  The tide was out.  But, stay!  It must be on the turn, for as she stood, there came the deep, tolling note of the bell-buoy.  It sounded like a knell.

As it struck solemnly over the water, the man straightened himself, and in a moment he saw her.

He did not move to meet her, merely stood motionless, nearly knee-deep in the bog-myrtle, and waited for her, the white roses in one great, clenched hand.  And she, as if compelled, moved towards him, till at last she reached and stood before him, white, mute, passive as a prisoner in iron fetters.

It was the man who spoke, with an odd jerkiness of tone and demeanour that might have indicated embarrassment or even possibly some deeper emotion.  “So you’ve come along at last!” he said.

She nodded.  For an instant her dark eyes were raised, but they flashed downwards again immediately, almost before they had met his own.

Abruptly he thrust out to her the flowers he held.  “I was getting these for you.”

She took them in a trembling hand.  She bent her face over them to hide the piteous quivering of her lips.  “Why—­do you get them?” she whispered almost inarticulately.

He did not answer for a moment.  Then:  “Come down to my place!” he said.  “It’s but a step.”

She made a swift gesture that had in it something of recoil, but the next moment, without a word, she began to walk down the slope.

He trod through the growth beside her, barefooted, unfaltering.  His blue eyes looked straight before him; they were unwavering and resolute as the man himself.

They reached the cottage.  He made her enter it before him, and he followed, but he did not close the door.  Instead, he stopped and deliberately hooked it back.

Then, with the low call of the sea filling the humble little room, he turned round to the girl, who stood with her head bent, awaiting his pleasure.

“Columbine,” he said, and the name came with an unaccustomed softness from his lips, “I’ve something to say to you.  You’ve been hiding yourself from me.  I know.  I know.  And you needn’t.  Them flowers—­I gathered ’em and I sent ’em up to you every day, because I wanted you to understand as you’ve nothing to fear from me.  I wanted you to know as everything is all right, and I mean well by you.  I didn’t know how to tell you, and then I saw the roses growing outside the door, and I thought as maybe they’d do it for me.  They made me think of you somehow.  They were so white—­and pure.”