"And so we may have to pa.s.s the rest of our lives here."

"It is better to consider how very much worse off we might be. For myself.... Besides, one never knows. Some unexpected chance may turn up."

"And you can bear to think of living on and on and on here till--the end?"

"I can bear to think of it very much better than I could a short time ago.... No cloud is black on both sides. Look on the bright side.

Either of us might have been here alone. That would have been terrible----"

"I should have been dead."

"But instead of that we are two, we have comfortable shelter, the mighty blessing of fire, food enough to last us as long as we live----

"It sounds like that man in the Bible--the man who had his barns full, all he wanted to eat and drink, and so he made merry. And that night he died, if I remember rightly."

"We are not boasting. We arrived here lacking everything, and everything has been provided for us. We have reason to be grateful.

Even Macro was necessary. He showed us how to turn the wreck-pile to account. If I had come ash.o.r.e alone I doubt if I would ever have gone out to it again. It did not attract me.... And--he found you and brought you ash.o.r.e."

"And that was the beginning of the end."

"No--the beginning of better things. We will hope the end is a long way off yet."

"I wonder ... and what it will be," said she thoughtfully.

And he wondered if in her heart there was any sweet white seed of hope akin to that which was striking its roots so deeply in his own,--and if not, if it might be possible to plant it there.

XLV

This new life, free from the shadow of perpetual menace, was full of rare and delicate charm for both of them, differing only in quality and degree according to that wherewith Nature had endowed them.

One root-thought was inevitable to both their minds--that here were they two, cut off from the rest of the world, probably for the term of their natural lives. Here, as far as they could foresee, they two must live, alone,--together; and here, in the end, they must die; their living and their dying alike unseen and unknown except by their Maker.

In his heart the white seed of the greater hope was striking deep and strong, filling his whole being with a new and exquisite delight before even it had had time to shoot and flower.

Exile for life on that barren strip of sand, which with Macro as sole fellow-sufferer would have been barely tolerable, a.s.sumed a very different aspect with Avice Drummond as his companion; and with her as sole companion, an aspect of supremest joy and expectation. It was no longer a thing to look forward to with foreboding, or at best with dull and hopeless acquiescence in the inevitable. The shadow had suddenly lifted. The desert had suddenly blossomed like the rose. The future smiled shyly as does the dawn with promise of the day.

But this new great hope, and the sense of it all in him, were of so fine and delicate a nature that he hardly dared to whisper it even in his inmost heart, lest she should see some sign of it and take fright, and all his hope vanish like smoke in a gale.

She was so fair and sweet, so charming and gracious, so pre-eminently and perfectly desirable. It was highest and keenest delight--delight so keen that at times it had in it the elements of pain--simply to watch the play of her face, so eloquently responsive to the quick emotional soul within,--the large dark eyes so clear and frank, so unreservedly trustful of him.

He would sooner die than forfeit one iota of the honour her faith conferred on him. And that great springing hope of his must be carefully covered and concealed, until such time as he should discover in her eyes the outlook of a hope responsive.

It would come. It would come, he said to himself--in time--when she should have come to know him still better and to trust him still more fully--to the uttermost.

For the ultimate goal of his desire was, in the manner of its possible attainment at all events, somewhat nebulous to him, though it set the whole distant future ablaze with rosy fires. In the nature of things, circ.u.mstanced as they were, such ultimate attainment, if ever it were reached, could be reached only by the treading of unusual ways. And to require that of any girl--and especially of a girl such as this, high-born, intelligent beyond most, and deeply versed in the great world's ways--was asking of her more than any true man, truly loving, could bring himself to ask,--unless to both their hearts no other thing were possible,--unless the barrier of Circ.u.mstance left no other possible hope or way.

And for the proving of that, Time held the keys and must have his say.

He wondered often, and with keenest anxiety, if her heart could possibly have come through all the strange experiences of her previous life unchallenged, una.s.sailed, unwon. Seeing that she was what she was it seemed to him almost impossible.

She was to him so compact of goodness and beauty, so fashioned to bewitch, that he could not imagine any man impervious to her grace and charm. What manner of men could they be who, consorting with her daily and on terms of equality, had failed to capture a heart so made for loving?

He recalled in minutest detail all she had told him of her past life and friends and acquaintances, figured them all in his mind, weighed them jealously in the scales of his own devotion, and could not discover one trace of emotion towards one or another, but rather of aversion towards all.

Again and again she had expressed the joy she had felt at the prospect of her escape to a freer and larger life. It was, of course, not impossible that that feeling might but hide some heart-breaking disappointment of the earlier times. But he did not think so. She was to him truth personified, though still a woman. He believed in her absolutely, as a man should in the woman who holds his heart. So far as a.s.surance could go,--without the definite question which he longed to put but did not yet dare, lest the hopeful anxiety of his present state should be turned to hopeless regret,--he felt fairly safe in building on a rosy future.

How she regarded himself he could not surely say. But she trusted him and that was a good foundation for his building.

And she? Well, that is our story!

XLVI

That thick white bank of mist clung to them for the best part of a week. But, freed from all fear of treacherous a.s.sault, it troubled them little.

Once they had to go ash.o.r.e for water, but got back safely by means of their guiding-line, and as they pushed through the fog they recalled that former time, when the mate's grim figure fashioned itself suddenly out of the clammy whiteness and brought them near to a disastrous end.

For the rest they had no scarcity. The fish bit as well in the fog as in the clear, and they had pork and flour for weeks to come.

In their narrow confinement to the ship, their intimacy and knowledge of one another grew with the days. She talked well, and he was an excellent listener, and led her on and on to tell him of the past and all that had interested her in it, and mused on all she said, and sought in it enlightenment as to her heart's freedom or otherwise.

Once, when she had been roving at length through her earlier days, she broke off suddenly with, "But, mon Dieu, I am doing all the talking!

Now, tell me of yourself!"

"I have so little to tell compared with you. Shall I tell you of school-days--of college--of the hospitals--of my patients and their ailments?"

"Tell me why you left it all to seek the new life."

"For very much the same reason as you did, I imagine. I was living in a groove and I wanted something wider and larger."

"And now you are sorry."

"So very sorry that if I had the chance again, and knew beforehand all that was to come, I would jump at it like the fish to our hooks," as he hauled one aboard and knocked it an the head. "And you?"

"Ye--es, I think I would have come also. Not perhaps if I had known I would have to float about on that mast. It was so terribly cold,"--with a shiver. "For the rest, I have no regrets, but it is perhaps too soon to say. In ten years hence I may have come to be sorry."

"Ay--ten years hence!" he said musingly. "Many things may happen in ten years. There's a fish on your hook," and she hauled it in and let him dispose of it.

As they sat at supper that night the blanket which supplied the place of companion-doors began to flap, and, going up to look, he found the mist whirling away before a gusty breeze.

"It's going to blow," he told her, "and when it's blown itself out we may have a spell of fine weather again," and he proceeded to block the opening with some planks he had chipped to size as well as he could with his axe.

The wind was rising rapidly, and before they turned in for the night the birds had all come in and were whirling and screaming round the ship, and lighting on it as was their custom in bad weather. But they had grown accustomed to their clamour and both slept soundly.