"'Yes. I know that it is so,' she answered me with a small sigh. 'Do you know that, far back, I come down from the Incas? and I dare say they thought less of work than of other things. . . . It is all thanks to your working that we three are alive, now. . . . I understand a little why men so much value their work. . . . But yet I do not understand why they drop their work to quarrel as they do. I understand it no better than the fighting of dogs.' She paused on that last word, and then, as though it had put new life into her, she sat erect and opened her eyes wider upon the horizon as she put the amazing question, 'Was it over a dog that you two hated?' "It staggered me: but I caught at the first explanation. 'Oh, I see,' said I. 'Your husband has been telling you?' "She didn't answer this at once. . . . At length, and as though my voice had taken long in reaching her, far out on the ocean where her gaze rested--'No,' said she, 'Pete has told me nothing. ... I never asked. . . . But if it is true, _ay de mi!_ then that which I behold is not true.' "'Of what are you speaking?' I asked. "'I saw an island,' she answered, as one in a dream: 'and again I see it. It has two sharp peaks and one that would seem to be cut short. Lawns of green climb up to the peaks between forests. There is a ring of surf all about the shore . . . but the boat has found a passage through . . . and you and Pete are landing . . . and-- strangest!--there is a dog leaping about on the shore to welcome you.' "I was silent, not caring to break in upon her happy delirium. 'But I am not there,' she whispered, almost in a moan. 'Why should a dog be there and not I?' Still getting no word from me, she turned her eyes full on mine and repeated the question imperatively, almost indignantly. 'Why should it be a dog?--and not _I_, over whom you never hated?' "'Santa,' said I, 'if there were such an island as you see--' "'But there _is_,' she interrupted quick as thought. 'There _is_, and it is near, though I shall not see it, except from the boat.' "'Say, then, that there is such an island--' said I. It was just possible: for during the last two days we had sighted many sea-birds. "'And near--quite near,' she insisted. 'It has groves of coco-trees, and streams tumbling down the rocks--on which no boat can row with men cursing in her and fighting with knives.' "'Then you shall land on that island, O beloved!' said I, 'and we will live on it, and love--' "'Ah, I know what you mean! You mean as they love in heaven? Yes.' And she added quite simply. 'I have had great trouble with men.'