If I can find
needle and thread, for instance...." She indicated her clothing with a
humorously rueful gesture.

"To be sure," he agreed, far too visibly relieved. Then his wits
stumbled. "I want to think out some things," he added most
superfluously.

"You won't go out of sight?" she pleaded through the window.

"It can't be done," he called back, strolling out of the dooryard with
much show of idle indecision.

His real purpose was, in fact, definite. There was another body to be
accounted for. It was quite possible that the sea might have given it up
at some other point along the island coast. True: there was no second
gathering of gulls to lend colour to this grisly theory; yet the danger
was one to be provided against, since she was not to know.

Starting from its northwestern extreme, he made a complete circuit of
the island, spending the greater part of the time along the edges of the
western and southern bluffs, where he had not seldom to pause and
scrutinize carefully the beach below, to make sure he had been deceived
by some half-buried rock or curiously shaped boulder.

To his intense relief, he made no further discovery other than a
scattering drift of wreckage from the motor-boats.

By the time he had finished, the morning was well advanced. He turned at
length and trudged wearily up from the northern beach, through the
community of desolation, back toward the farm-house.

Since breakfast he had seen nothing of the girl; none of the elaborately
casual glances which he had from time to time cast inland had discovered
any sign of her. But now she appeared in the doorway, and after a slight
pause, as of indecision, moved down the path to meet him.

He was conscious that, at sight of her, his pulses quickened. Something
swelled in his breast, something tightened the muscles of his throat.
The way of her body in action, the way of the sun with her hair...!

Dismay shook him like an ague; he felt his heart divided against itself;
he was so glad of her, and so afraid.... He could not keep his eyes from
her, nor could he make his desire be still; and yet ... and yet....

Walking the faster of the two, she met him midway between the house and
the beach.

"You've taken your time, Mr. Whitaker," said she.

"It was a bit of a walk," he contended, endeavouring to imitate her
lightness of manner.

They paused beside one of the low stone walls that meandered in a
meaningless fashion this way and that over