towards me with this borne before her.

"Ha," says I, viewing her tear-wet cheeks as she came, "must ye weep,
madam, must ye weep?"

"May I not weep, Martin?" says she, head pitifully a-droop. "Come, let
us go back, you look very pale, 'twas wrong of you to come so far!
Here is our breakfast, 'tis the best I can find." And she showed me a
few poor shellfish.

"Give me the turtle-shell!" says I.

"Indeed I can bear it very easily, Martin. And you so white and
haggard--your wound is troubling you. Come, let me bathe it--"

"Give me the turtle-shell!"

"No, Martin, be wise and let us--"

"Will you gainsay me--d'ye defy me?"

"O Martin, no, but you are so weak--"

"Weak! Am I so?" And stooping, I caught her up in my arms, upsetting
the turtle-shell and spilling the result of her labours. So with her
crushed to me I turned and set off along the beach, and she, lying thus
helpless, must needs fall to weeping again and I, in my selfish and
blind folly, to plaguing the sweet soul therewith, as:

"England is far away, my Lady Joan! Here be no courtly swains, no
perfumed, mincing lovers, to sigh and bow and languish for you. Here
is Solitude, lady. Desolation hath you fast and is not like to let you
go--here mayhap shall you live--and die! An ill place this and, like
nature, strong and cruel. An ill place and an ill rogue for company.
You named me rogue once and rogue forsooth you find me. England is far
away--but God--is farther--"

Thus I babbled, scowling down on her, as I bore her on until my breath
came in great gasps, until the sweat poured from me, until I sank to my
knees and striving to rise found I might not, and glaring wildly up saw
we were come 'neath Bartlemy's cursed pimento tree. Then she, loosing
herself from my fainting arms, bent down to push the matted hair from
my eyes, to support my failing strength in tender arms, and to lower my
heavy head to her knee.

"Foolish child!" she murmured, "Poor, foolish child! England is very
far I know, but this I know also, Martin, God is all about us, and here
in our loneliness within these great solitudes doth walk beside us."

"Yet you weep!" says I.

"Aye, I did, Martin."

"Because--of the--loneliness?"

"No, Martin."

"Your--lost friends?"

"No, Martin."

"Then--wherefore?"

"O trouble not for thing so small, a woman's tears come easily, they
say."

"Not yours, Joan. Yet you wept--"

"Your wound bleeds afresh, lie you there an