would be nothing but a desperate expedition, supposing even
that she would drift out a good distance between the islands before the
morning. It would only be a complicated manner of committing suicide--to
be found dead in a boat, dead from sun and thirst. A sea mystery.
I wonder who would find us! Davidson, perhaps; but Davidson passed
westward ten days ago. I watched him steaming past one early morning,
from the jetty."

"You never told me," she said.

"He must have been looking at me through his big binoculars. Perhaps, if
I had raised my arm--but what did we want with Davidson then, you and
I? He won't be back this way for three weeks or more, Lena. I wish I had
raised my arm that morning."

"What would have been the good of it?" she sighed out.

"What good? No good, of course. We had no forebodings. This seemed to be
an inexpugnable refuge, where we could live untroubled and learn to know
each other."

"It's perhaps in trouble that people get to know each other," she
suggested.

"Perhaps," he said indifferently. "At any rate, we would not have gone
away from here with him; though I believe he would have come in eagerly
enough, and ready for any service he could render. It's that fat man's
nature--a delightful fellow. You would not come on the wharf that time
I sent the shawl back to Mrs. Schomberg through him. He has never seen
you."

"I didn't know that you wanted anybody ever to see me," she said.

He had folded his arms on his breast and hung his head.

"And I did not know that you cared to be seen as yet. A misunderstanding
evidently. An honourable misunderstanding. But it does not matter now."

He raised his head after a silence.

"How gloomy this forest has grown! Yet surely the sun cannot have set
already."

She looked round; and as if her eyes had just been opened, she perceived
the shades of the forest surrounding her, not so much with gloom, but
with a sullen, dumb, menacing hostility. Her heart sank in the engulfing
stillness, at that moment she felt the nearness of death, breathing on
her and on the man with her. If there had been a sudden stir of leaves,
the crack of a dry branch, the faintest rustle, she would have screamed
aloud. But she shook off the unworthy weakness. Such as she was, a
fiddle-scraping girl picked up on the very threshold of infamy, she
would try to rise above herself, triumphant and humble; and then
happiness would burst on her like a torrent, flinging at her feet t