A low whistle floated through the slumbrous silence and died softly away
among the sand-dunes.

The man who sat in the little wooden summer-house that faced the sea
raised his head from his hand and stared outwards. The signal had
scarcely penetrated to his inner consciousness, but it had vaguely
disturbed his train of thought. His eyes were dull and emotionless as he
stared across the blue, smiling water to the long, straight line of the
horizon. They were heavy also as if he had not slept for weeks, and
there were deep lines about his clean-shaven mouth.

Before him on the rough, wooden table lay a letter--a letter that he
knew by heart, yet carried always with him. The writing upon it was firm
and regular, but unmistakably a woman's. It began: "Dear Hugh," and it
ended: "Yours very sincerely," and it had been written to tell him that
because he was crippled for life the writer could no longer entertain
the idea of sharing hers with him.

There had been a ring enclosed with the letter, but this he had not
kept. He had dropped it into the heart of a blazing fire on the day
that he had first been able to move without assistance. He had not done
it in anger. Simply the consciousness of possessing it had been a pain
intolerable to him. So he had destroyed it; but the letter he had kept
through all the dreary months that had followed that awful time. It was
all that was left to him of one whom he had loved passionately, blindly,
foolishly, and who had ceased to love him on the day, now nearly a year
ago, when his friends had ceased to call him by the nickname of
Hercules, that had been his from his boyhood.

And this was her wedding-day--a day of entrancing sunshine, of magic