She colored, looking at him strangely. She could not throw away his property--anything of such great intrinsic value. She was baffled again, as he managed so frequently. Her hand and the golden circlet fell at her side. She could think of no appropriate speech of final rejection. A whimsical notion only arose to her groping mind. "Fancy me wearing this priceless band of splendor," she said, "and eating with a stick!" "It will just about fit around your waist," he conjectured, taking it from her as he rose. With easy strength he bent it in his hands, to make it more snugly conform to her slender and graceful little body. Why should he not bend it thus, she thought, who had wrenched it from a tiger? She felt how weak and inadequate was her own diminishing struggle. But to wear this band--a symbol, almost, of Grenville's ownership---- A hot recurrence of her former pride came surging to her bosom. "It's too heavy to wear," she told him, a trifle coldly. She once more accepted the girdle, however, despite herself, from his hand. "The tiger that wore it," she concluded, "met with a lot of trouble." "You've met with some yourself," he answered, candidly, and he shouldered the skin and started off for the estuary's mouth. Elaine burned suddenly scarlet, interpreting his speech in some manner of her own. Helplessly she carried the girdle to her cave, and left it there in a hollow of the rock. The incident concerned with the tiger was practically closed. A new, bright era of security and liberty thereupon commenced, particularly for Elaine. She could not take immediate advantage of the comfort thus vouchsafed in moving about the island, but at least her worry was lessened when Grenville was obliged to venture in the jungle. His return to the work so frequently interrupted was delayed but the briefest time. So eager did he constantly feel to accomplish his boat's completion that he had grudged every hour the tiger had cost him from his labors. With no thought of sparing his tireless strength, he promptly resumed the task of digging and fetching the clay. Elaine might have joined him in the clearing now had not some task she was eager to complete engrossed her attentions at the shelter. That day the remaining surface of his prostrate log was plastered by Grenville's eager hands. He likewise mixed sufficient clay to finish his furnace in the morning. The fire that was helping to hollow his log was once again ignited. Much of the old charred substance, left from previous operations, Grenville knocked away with an improvised tool of brass, in order to daub more clay inside the shell before the flames could continue removing the wood as he required.