wnpour was so
dazzling that more than once the stranger shaded his eyes with his hand.
Had it not been for the soft babble of many voices, the silence would
have been intense, until the ear was tuned to the low tinkle of the
night bells, for the sea was calm.

Once, as if in explanation for words unspoken, he commented nervously on
the sensation of unreality with which these tropic scenes inspired him,
and Rachael, who longed to withdraw her hand from his arm, told him of
an entertainment peculiar to the Islands, a torchlight hunt for
land-crabs, which once a year travel down from the mountains to the sea,
to bathe and shed their shells. Words hastened. Before she drew breath
she had arranged a hunt for the night of the 10th of April, and received
his promise to be one of her guests. They were not so happy as they had
been within doors, for the world seemed wider. But their inner selves
pressed so hard toward each other that finally they were driven to
certain egotisms as a relief.

"I think little of the future," she said, after a direct question, "for
that means looking beyond my mother's death, and that is the one fact I
have not the courage to face. But of course I know that it holds nothing
for me. A ball occasionally, and the conversation of clever men who
admire me but care for some one else, books the rest of the week, and
life alone on a shelf of the mountain. The thought that I shall one day
be old does not console me as it may console men, for with women the
heart never grows old. The body withers, and the heart in its awful
eternal youth has the less to separate and protect it from the world
that has no use for it. Then the body dies and is put away, but the
heart is greedily consumed to feed the great pulses of the world that
lives faster every year. We give, and give, and give."

"And are only happy in giving," said Hamilton, quickly. "But if men
preserve the balance of the world by taking all that women give them, at
least the best of us find our happiness in the gifts of one woman, and a
woman so besought dare not assert that her heart is empty. I
understand--and no one more clearly than I do to-night--that if she give
too much, she may curse her heart and look out bitterly upon the
manifold interests that could suppress it for weeks and months--if life
were full enough. Is yours? What would you sacrifice if you came to me?"

He asked the question calmly, for there were people on every side of
them,