"I doubt it," with another shake of the head. "But, even then, it might have been best,"--with a shiver--"It sounds horrible--but----" He could understand all her feeling in the matter. In her place he would have felt just the same. The man was a hideous menace--to her especially--and there would be no security for them while he lived. But all the same.... "Let us get back to the fire," he said quietly. "He won't come back tonight. Poor wretch, he's probably been paddling about all day looking for his ship and he's half crazed with it." "I don't think I am bloodthirsty by nature," she said, with her hands pressed tight to her eyes, when she had sunk down before the fire again. "But I fear that man with all my soul, both for myself and you. He will kill you if he gets the chance. If he kills you I shall kill myself. It is better that one should die than two." "I agree, but I don't want to have the killing of him if I can help it." "Killing is horrible," and she shivered again, "But being killed is worse ... and to fall into the hands of a man like that would be even worse still. What will be the end of it all?" But that was beyond him, and their hearts were heavy over it. XXXVII "Is it often like this?" asked The Girl depressedly, on the third day of mist. "I'm afraid there's a good deal of it. We've had it three or four times since we came. It may be worse in the winter." "I wish we could get away." "I wish so too, but I don't see how we're to manage it ... unless, sometime, a boat washes ashore among the wreckage. And even then ... without Macro to manage it..." and he shook his head unhopefully. "... In the meantime I count it marvellous gain that you should have come----" And at that it was her turn to shake her head. "I don't know. I seem to have brought more harm than good." "It has made all the difference in the world." "Yes, it has set you two by the ears and put you in peril of your life. That is not a good work." "Your company more than compensates. Besides, we should probably have got to loggerheads in any case, and without anything like so good a reason." "It would have been better, I think, if you had let me go when I was so nearly gone, and not rubbed me back to life." "I thank God that you came," he said weightily. "Without you we might have sunk into savages, caring only for the lower things. You lift me without knowing it." "You couldn't sink into a savage. He is one naturally. And I am becoming one, for I am all the time wishing he were dead." "He must be having a bad time, unless he brought over provisions that last time, and I doubt if he did. He's probably living chiefly on rum. And that won't bring him to any better frame of mind, I'm afraid." "To think," she mused, "that three people cannot live on an island big enough to hold thousands, without quarrelling to the death!" "The trouble is not of our making, so we need not blame ourselves."