d
methought her kinder than ordinary and our friendship only the
stronger, which did comfort me mightily.

But our supper done we spake little, for night was come upon us very
still and dark save for a glitter of stars, by whose unearthly light
all things took on strange shapes, and our solitude seemed but the more
profound and awesome.

Above us a purple sky be-gemmed by a myriad stars, a countless host
whose distant splendour throbbed upon the night; round about us a gloom
of woods and thickets that hemmed us in like a dark and sombre tide,
whence stole a sweet air fraught with spicy odours; and over all a deep
and brooding quietude. But little by little upon this silence crept
sounds near and far, leafy rustlings, a stirring in the undergrowth,
the whimper of some animal, the croak of a bird, and the faint,
never-ceasing murmur of the surge.

And I, gazing thus upon this measureless immensity, felt myself humbled
thereby, and with this came a knowledge of the futility of my life
hitherto. And now (as often she had done, ere this) my companion
voiced the thought I had no words for.

"Martin," says she, softly, "what pitiful things are we, lost thus in
God's infinity."

"And doth it affright you, Damaris?"

"No, Martin, for God is all-merciful. Yet I needs must think how vain
our little strivings, our hopes and fears, how small our joys and
sorrows!"

"Aye, truly, truly!" quoth I.

"But," says she, leaning towards me in the firelight and with her gaze
uplifted to the starry heavens, "He who made the heavens is a merciful
God, 'who hath made great lights ... the moon and the stars to govern
the night.' So, Martin, 'let us give thanks unto the Lord for He is
good, for His mercy endureth forever; and in this knowledge methinks we
may surely rest secure."

After this we fell silent again, I for one being very full of
troublesome thought and perplexity, and the sum of it this, viz.,
whether a woman, cast alone on a desolate island with a man such as I,
had need to fear him? To the which question answer found I none.
Wherefore I got me another speculation, to wit: Whether a man and
woman thus solitary must needs go a-falling in love with one another?
Finding no answer to this either, I turned, half-minded to put the
question to my companion, and found her fast asleep.

She lay deep-slumbering in the light of the fire, her face half-hid
'neath a tress of shining hair; and I viewing her, chin in fist, saw i