t, there!"--weariness edging in. "I am sorry. I
shouldn't talk like that. I'm a poor nurse."

"You are the most wonderful human being I ever saw!" And he meant
it.

She trembled; but she did not know why. "You mustn't talk any more;
the excitement isn't good for you."

Drama. To get behind that impenetrable curtain, to learn why she
hated her island. Never had he been so intrigued. Why, there was
drama in the very dress she wore! There was drama in the unusual
beauty of her, hidden away all these years on a forgotten isle!

"You've been lonely, too."

"You mustn't talk."

He ignored the command. "To be lonely! What is physical torture, if
someone who loves you is nigh? But to be alone ... as I am!... yes,
and as you are! Oh, you haven't told me, but I can see with half an
eye. With nobody who cares ... the both of us!"

He was real in this moment. She was given a glimpse of his soul.
She wanted to take him in her arms and hush him, but she sat
perfectly still. Then came the shock of the knowledge that soon he
would be going upon his way, that there would be no one to depend
upon her; and all the old loneliness came smothering down upon her
again. She could not analyse what was stirring in her: the thought
of losing the doll, the dog, and the cat. There was the world
besides, looming darker and larger.

"What would you like most in this world?" he asked. Once more he
was the searcher.

"Red apples and snow!" she sent back at him, her face suddenly
transfixed by some inner glory.

"Red apples and snow!" he repeated. He returned figuratively to his
bed--the bed he had made for himself and in which he must for ever
lie. Red apples and snow! How often had these two things entered
his thoughts since his wanderings began? Red apples and snow!--and
never again to behold them!

"I am going out for a little while," she said. She wanted to be
alone. "Otherwise you will not get your morning's sleep."

He did not reply. His curiosity, his literary instincts, had been
submerged by the recurring thought of the fool he had made of
himself. He heard the door close; and in a little while he fell
into a doze; and there came a dream filled with broken pictures,
each one of which the girl dominated. He saw her, dripping with
rosy pearls, rise out of the lagoon in the dawn light: he saw her
flashing to and fro among the coco palms in the moonshine: he saw
her breasting the hurricane, her body as full of grace and beauty
as