"I want to sketch you in the position most natural to you here," she said finally, "and must ask you to choose that yourself."
"Let us trim the boat the way mine was that day," he suggested at last, "and I will sit beside it and smoke while you work."
The idea was adopted, and while Telly sketched, he smoked, contented to watch the winsome face, so oblivious of his admiring glances.
"There," she observed, after a half hour of active pencilling, "please lay your cigar aside and look pleasant. I want to catch the expression of your face."
When the sketch was completed she asked if he had any suggestions to make.
"Only one," he replied, "and that is, I would like you in the picture and sitting beside me."
She colored a little at this, for though utterly unused to the polite flatteries of society, she could not mistake his open admiration.
"I would rather not be in it," she replied soberly. "I only want to see you as you are here to-day. It may be a long time before you come to the Cape again."
It was an inadvertent speech, though quite expressive of her feelings, but she had no idea how anxious he was to obtain the insight it gave him.
"Would you like me to come often?" he queried.
"Of course," she answered, turning away her face; "it is so lonesome here, and there is no one I care to talk with except father and mother and Aunt Leach and Mandy Oaks."
Albert's heart began to beat with unusual speed. Never in his life before had he felt the impulse to utter words of love to any woman, and now he was face to face with the sweet though dreaded ordeal. For weal or woe, he could not go back and leave them unsaid. He had planned to say about what he had to Uncle Terry, beginning with a brief history of his life, his income, his hopes, and ending with asking her to share them. But the fortress of a woman's heart is seldom assailed that way, and with the queen of his, alone there beside him in that peaceful nook, where only the tiniest pulse of the ocean rippled on the rocks, he quite forgot his address to this fair judge and jury. "Telly," he said, "I promised to tell you a little story here to-day, but it's all said in a few words. I love you, and I want you to share my life and all that I can do to make you happy." A trifle incoherent, but expressive; and the answer?