For he had _her_; and as at last her lids twitched, then opened, and her dazed eyes looked at him; as she tried to struggle up while he restrained her; as she chokingly called his name and stretched a tremulous hand to him, there in the thunderous half light of the falls, he knew he could not ask for greater joy, though all of civilization and of power might be his, without her. In his own soul he knew he would choose this abandonment and all this desperate peril with Beatrice, rather than safety, comfort, luxury, and the whole world as it once had been apart from her. Yet, as sometimes happens in the supreme crises of life, his first spoken word was commonplace enough. "There, there, lie still!" he commanded, drawing her close to his breast. "You're all right, now--just keep quiet, Beatrice!" "What--what's happened--" she gasped. "_Where_--" "Just a little accident, that's all," he soothed the frightened girl. Dazed by the roaring cadence of the torrent, she shuddered and hid her face against him; and his arms protected her as he crouched there beside her in the scant shelter of the rocky shelf. "We got carried over a waterfall, or something of that sort," he added. "We're on a ledge in the river, or whatever it is, and--" "You're hurt, Allan?" "No, no--are _you?_" "It's nothing, boy!" She looked up again, and even in the dim light he saw her try to smile. "Nothing matters so long as we have each other!" Silence between them for a moment, while he drew her close and kissed her. He questioned her again, but found that save for bruises and a cruel blow on the temple, she had taken no hurt in the plunge that had stunned her. Both, they must have been flung from the yawl when it had gone to pieces. How long they had lain upon the rock they knew not. All they could know was that the light woodwork of the boat had been dashed away with their supplies and that now they again faced the world empty-handed--provided even that escape were possible from the midst of that mad torrent. An hour or so they huddled in the shelter of the rocky shelf till strength and some degree of calm returned and till the growing light far off to eastward through the haze and mist told them that day was dawning again. Then Allan set to work exploring once more carefully their little islet in the swirling flood. "You stay here, Beta," said he. "So long as you keep back of this projection you're safe. I'm going to see just what the prospect is." "Oh, be careful, Allan!" she entreated. "Be so very, very careful, won't you?" He promised and left her. Then, cautiously, step by step, he made his way along the ledge in the other direction from that where he had found the senseless girl.