Despite herself she blushed. But she looked steadily back into his eyes. "Yes," she said. "Very much."

"I like looking at you too," he said.

The look in his eyes alerted her and she took a hasty step back. "No ideas, I said," she told him, holding out one staying hand.

But he was laughing and stepped easily past her defenses. Her bonnet went first and her hairpins, then her dress, and then her slippers and stockings. She was standing on the open beach in just her shift.

"John," she said, shocked.

"Much better," he said, looking at her.

"I shall sit here and watch you," she said hastily, trying to suit action to words. "I shall wrap-"

But she had suddenly lost contact with the warm sand of the beach. He had swung her up into his arms and was grinning at her like-oh, like a foolish, immature schoolboy.

"John," she scolded as he turned and set off for the water, ' 'put me down. You are not strong enough. Oh, you will not be content until you have done yourself an injury, will you?"

His feet were splashing in water. She felt one stray drop on her bare leg. It felt like a droplet of ice.

"John." She clung more tightly. "Don't. It is like ice. This is most indecent. You talked of forfeits once. Let me pay a forfeit. What would you like? A kiss?" She was desperate for him to take her seriously, though the effect of her plea was marred somewhat, she had to admit, by the fact that she was giggling helplessly.

"I would not let you fall in the water, my love," he said when he was waist-deep and had to hold her higher. "Trust me." He grinned into her face. "Kiss me."

She did so.

"Of course," he said, "you have been right all along. I do not have nearly as much strength as I thought I had."

Concern was just beginning to register on her face and on her mind when he dropped her. He was laughing like an imbecile when she came up gasping and sputtering and coughing. She found her footing with difficulty and went straight to the attack. The first great spray of water took him full in the face. She would have laughed with glee if she had finished mastering the shock of the cold. Instead she threw herself backward on the water and swam away from him.

And then he was beside her, matching her stroke for stroke, examining the blue sky above them and the few fluffy clouds, as she was doing. She remembered his teaching her to swim when she was five years old and terrified of water. He had taught her how to put her head under and how to open her eyes-and then he had taught her all the rest. He had been nine years old-totally dependable, totally adult.

"You wretch," she said when they were standing again in water that reached almost to her shoulders. "John, that was a dreadful thing to do." But she was putting her arms up about his shoulders and leaning her body against his and lifting her face for his kiss.

"John, you wretch," she whispered again, shocked, after a minute or so when she felt his hands hoisting her shift to her waist. He lifted her in the water, parting her legs to wrap about him. He was inside her with one firm thrust.

It took very little time. The mix of buoyancy and cool water and heat at their core was delirious. It seemed that the lessons would never end. There was always something new.

He floated onto his back when they were finished, and she swam beside him in a lazy crawl.

"You are going to be tired," she could not resist saying.

"No future tense about it," he admitted, smiling lazily at her. "Shall we go back to the towels?"

"Yes," she said. "We can lie there drying off in the sun and you can tell me your story."

They walked hand in hand up the beach. She knew he was tired. But it was the tiredness of healthy exertion. After he had told his story, she would let him sleep and she would stay awake to make sure that they did not bake too much in the sun.


* * *

He had decided to tell her his story. There should be no secrets in marriage, he thought, except perhaps details of one's past that could only hurt. She should know that the John who had recovered from consumption and consummated their marriage and lived with her ever since was not quite the same John she had loved all her life and married.

Perhaps she would not believe him. But he thought she probably would. She loved him and trusted him enough to know when he spoke truth to her.

Their flesh had chilled in the walk up the beach. They toweled off briskly and then he spread the dry towel on the sand so that they could lie down and relax after their swim and their lovemaking and be warmed by the sun. He held her hand in his, turning her ring between his thumb and forefinger. Life was very good, he thought, and had been very kind to them.

"John," she said, "don't fall asleep yet. You have a story to tell me."

"And so I do." He turned his head to smile at her.

"Well?" she said after he had been silent for a few moments.

He had had a story to tell her. Something important. Something he had felt she had a right to know. He frowned. His mind was a blank. "I cannot remember," he said.

"Don't tease." She shook his hand. "Tell me. It had something to do with the miracle that has happened to you."

"Oh, yes, of course," he said. Yes. It explained the how, he had told her earlier, but not the why. He knew the why. But what on earth was the how? "I-It has gone. It could not have been very important if it has gone, could it?"

She was gazing at him, her head turned to one side. "How did it happen, John?" she said. "You had consumption. In its final stages. You were coughing blood. It was a miracle. Nothing else could have saved you. How did it happen?''

How? He knew how it had happened. He concentrated hard and had fleeting images of her ring in a velvet pouch and of his being afraid to touch it; of a red horseless carriage; of a blond woman. Disjointed, meaningless images that would not form themselves into any graspable thought. And then he knew again. Of course. He looked at her in some relief.

"I have remembered now," he said. "It is this place, Adèle. When you were kind enough to marry me, to saddle yourself with a dying man, I had just one thought in my mind. I had to come here with you. It was madness. I had no strength left. I had only a few weeks left at most. But I knew that I had to come here. That if I brought you here the miracle would happen. I knew it. I had to come here with you as my wife and you had to be wearing the family betrothal ring. I swear I knew it. It is this place, you see."

Her eyes had filled with tears. Two of them spilled over and ran diagonally across her cheeks as he watched. "I knew it too," she whispered. "I thought you would die on the journey, John. You were so very weak, so very ill. But I knew that if I could only get you here to Cartref all would be well."

"The world would think us mad if we offered this as an explanation," he said.

"The world may think what it will," she said.

"Adèle." He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the ring. "I know that for many years I was too busy to love you as you deserved to be loved. I had to be near death to understand how far more precious than anyone or anything else in my life you are. Will you stay here with me for the rest of our lives? Will you work with me here in this neighborhood? There is much we can do. There is a lighthouse to build, for one. Will you have our children here and bring them up with me here?"

Her eyes were soft and huge with wistfulness and love. "You will miss England," she said. "And London. You were always restless."

"No longer," he said. "I am where I belong and where I want to be-for the rest of my life. Why leave heaven merely to go back to earth?"

He saw final surrender in her eyes then to faith and trust and love. She finally believed in him. It was the greatest gift she could have given him. Though he almost changed his mind a few moments later.

"John," she said softly. "About those children. I think-I am not quite sure, but I think I am with child."

For all the heat of the sun beating down on their bodies then, he took her into his arms and held her close. He kept his eyes tight shut. He did not know how the miracle had happened or why. But it had happened. He had been given the gift of a new life and he was going to give back the gift of love for the rest of his life. Every day of it.

"My love," he whispered to her before drifting toward sleep. "Ah, my love."


******************

"Some grand engagement day this is turning out to be," she said as he was waking up. "You fell asleep, John. How totally humiliating to have had that effect on a man." But there was laughter in her voice to temper the words.

Yes, he had been fast asleep. The first thing that struck him as he came floating up to the surface again was that he felt different. Totally different. Unaware of his body, unaware of his breathing, unaware of his weakness, almost as if he were healthy again. Or as if-as if he had died and was waking up to a new world.

He was healthy. There was sudden conviction in the thought and his eyes shot open.

He found himself gazing into Allison's accusing-and amused-eyes.

He knew her name. He knew her. He reached back cautiously and a little fearfully into memory and found that he had a memory that was not quite his own.

"Heavenly days," she said, "you must have been very fast asleep. Where were you? A million miles away?"

A million miles? Two hundred years, actually. He had fallen asleep in Adèle's arms. He had been very close to death. He had known that. He had wished he had the energy to tell her how much he appreciated what she had done for him, marrying him, surrounding him with her love so that he might die in peace. And yet, honest within himself, he had known that his own love, though real, was no match for hers. He had always loved her tenderly but without passion. Dear, gentle Adèle.