a gesture toward the water. "Of course. How else could they
get away?"

"The question is, how we are to get away," he grumbled, morose.

"You'll find the way," she told him with quiet confidence.

"I! I'll find the way? How?"

"I don't know--only you must. There must be some way of signalling the
mainland, some means of communication. Surely people wouldn't live here,
cut off from all the World.... Perhaps we'll find something in the
farm-house to tell us what to do. I didn't have much time to look round.
I wanted clothing, mostly--and found these awful things hanging behind
the kitchen door. And then I wanted something to eat, and I found
that--some bread, not too stale, and plenty of eggs in the hen-house....
And you--you must be famished!"

The reminder had an effect singularly distressing. Till then he had been
much too thunderstruck by comprehension of their anomalous plight to
think of himself. Now suddenly he was stabbed through and through with
pangs of desperate hunger. He turned a little faint, was seized with a
slight sensation of giddiness, at the thought of food, so that he was
glad of the cat-boat for support.

"Oh, you are!" Compassion thrilled her tone. "I'm so sorry. Forgive me
for not thinking of it at once. Come--if you can walk." She caught his
hand as if to help him onward. "It's not far, and I can fix you
something quickly. Do come."

"Oh, surely," he assented, recovering. "I am half starving--and then
some. Only I didn't know it until you mentioned the fact."

The girl relinquished his hand, but they were almost shoulder to
shoulder as they plodded through the dry, yielding sand toward firmer
ground.

"We can build a fire and have something hot," she said; "there's plenty
of fuel."

"But--what did you do?"

"I--oh, I took my eggs _au naturel_--barring some salt and pepper. I was
in too much of a hurry to bother with a stove--"

"Why in a hurry?"

She made no answer for an instant. He turned to look at her, wondering.
To his unutterable astonishment she not only failed to meet his glance,
but tried to seem unconscious of it.

The admirable ease and gracious self-possession which he had learned to
associate with her personality as inalienable traits were altogether
gone, just then--obliterated by a singular, exotic attitude of
constraint and diffidence, of self-consciousness. She seemed almost to
shrink from his regard, and held her face a little averted from him, the
full lips t