Suzanne, I love you as--as a man loves a maid--and if you will it, dear,
all my hope is that one day you will be my wife," and he ceased suddenly
and stood before her trembling, for he had risen from the stone.

For a few moments Suzanne covered her face with her hands, and when she
let them fall again he saw that her beautiful eyes shone like the large
stars at night, and that, although she was troubled, her trouble made
her happy.

"Oh! Ralph," she said at length, speaking in a voice that was different
from any he had ever heard her use, a voice very rich and low and full,
"Oh! Ralph, this is new to me, and yet to speak the truth, it seems
as old as--as that night when first I found you, a desolate, starving
child, praying upon this stone. Ralph, I do will it with all my heart
and soul and body, and I suppose that I have willed it ever since I
was a woman, though until this hour I did not quite know what it was I
willed. Nay, dear, do not touch me, or at the least, not yet. First hear
what I have to say, and then if you desire it, you may kiss me--if only
in farewell."

"If you will it and I will it, what more can you have to say?" he asked
in a quick whisper, and looking at her with frightened eyes.

"This, Ralph; that our wills, who are young and unlearned, are not all
the world; that there are other wills to be thought of; the wills of our
parents, or of mine rather, and the will of God."

"For the first," he answered, "I do not think that they stand in our
path, for they love you and wish you to be happy, although it is true
that I, who am but a wanderer picked up upon the veldt, have no fortune