"I'm afraid not,"--with a doleful shake of the head. "Unless you have had any experience in such things." "And so we may have to pass 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 ashore 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 ashore." "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, assumed 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.