h neither ever tired. Not a
dollar was earned but was thus laid out in advance, with eager
questioning and debate. The cow was bought, the horse, the chickens, the
wire for fencing. It was a game in which each played a part with
enduring zest; a game with a constant round of prizes and enjoyment; a
game in which green nature was the board and every plant and tree a
piece. At sundown they knew no pleasure like that of wandering hand in
hand through the paths of their little estate, two poetic peasants,
filled with love for each other and immeasurably content.

Thus the days passed in increasing satisfaction and prosperity, days so
rare in the life of any man when he says to himself, "I am happy." To
Jack, these three words, never spoken, but somewhere within him
articulate and peremptory, these three words almost overwhelmed him with
their significance. He trembled for this treasure, so elusive, so
transitory, perhaps, so surely ill deserved; he grew humble with the
thought of his own unworthiness, and, though no believer in the
ordinary sense, he began to feel the first stirring of religion. When
Fetuao, with sweet shame, laid her head against his shoulder and told
him of her impending motherhood, he kissed her, comforted her, and then,
rising to his feet, he sought the solitude that at such a moment he felt
he could not share even with her. In one of the unfrequented corners of
the bay, a narrow beach shadowed by the forest and faced by the open
sea, he threw himself upon his knees with a passionate thankfulness that
seemed to find its expression in this act. Knowing no prayer, addressing
no God, he simply gazed above him in the sky, in a rapt, dumb gratitude.

As he walked home he thought of his own parents, long since dead; of
their hopes, their cares, their humble unfulfilled ambitions, now dead
with them. He perceived himself, now for the first time, a link between
the past and the future, the heir of bygone generations, generations
that had loved, and suffered, and struggled, to no other end than that
he might live--he, and the sister he had neither seen nor heard from in
fourteen years. Hell! he ought to write to Amandar. Families oughtn't to
drift apart like that. It was a shame, a durned shame, and it came over
him with a shock that she, too, might be dead. He took a sheet of paper
and a pencil, and with heaving breast and overflowing heart thus broke
the silence of those long years:

OA BAY, SAMOA, May