splendour and great society, and how gladder still to hang her borrowed
white and silver away and be done with it and all it stood for and go
back to her gown of crash and her chimney-corner place in life, "which
I can now see," she added "is the place for dreams and sweet
companionship."

"And when I get back, will you be there?" he cried, eagerly.

"When you get back I will be there," she promised.

After that they sat and talked for long and long, while the blue sea
sparkled in the summer morning sun. When, at length, they rose to go,
there was a light that never shone on land or sea in his face and in
hers. There had been no further promises; only that one: "When you get
back I will be there." But each heart understood the other, and she
rejoiced to wait further declaration of his love until he could,
according to his tender fancy, make it to her as in his "dream come
true."

On the beach as they strolled back, it was her eyes--shining with a
soft, new radiance--that first caught sight of something; her fancy
that first grasped its significance. "Look!" she cried. In a
bowl-like hollow of a big brown rock, the receding tide had left a
little pool of sea-water. "It's left behind--this bit of the infinite,
unresting sea!" she said. "Who knows what far, far shores it's come
from? And now, here it is, and the great mother-sea's gone off and
left it."

He smiled tenderly at her sweet whimsy. "The great mother-sea will
come back for it at sundown," he reminded her.