"It is better to be alive than dead. And if we have to live here all our lives--very well, we must put up with it. And if you and he die, and I am left all alone, and get old and sick, as you said yesterday, I will make an end of myself. I was thinking about it all night except when I was sleeping." "I'm sorry to have troubled you so. We will hope for better things. Anyway I have no intention of dying for some time to come, if I can help it." "You must not," she said, with sudden deep earnestness. "I count it God's good mercy that you are here, for I can trust you." "I am used to being trusted," he said quietly. "I know. I can see it.... If I had been all alone ... with nobody but him ... But, no! I could not..." "I don't know that there is any harm in him." She sat nodding her pretty head meaningly.... "You have not seen men loosed from all restraints as I have. I was but a child and did not fully understand. But I see their faces and their eyes still, fierce and wild and hungry for other than bread. When men are answerable to none but themselves they become wild beasts and devils." "It is a hard saying." "But it is true. I have seen it." "And women?" "They are as bad, but in a different way. Oh, they are terrible." "And you and I and Macro here? To whom are we answerable?" he asked, to sound her to the depths. "He is answerable to you," she said quickly. "You and I are answerable to one another, and to God, and to ourselves--to all that has made us what we are. I do not think you could trespass outside all that, any more than I could." "I do not think I could. I am honoured by your confidence in me." He helped her ashore, and they filled the buckets at the pools, and then she expressed a wish to see something more of this sandbank where they might have to pass the rest of their lives. So they threaded their way among the hummocks to the northern shore, and, at the first green valley they came to, she went down on her knees and examined carefully the nestling growths on which the rabbits fed, and found among them certain pungent little plants which she thought might serve for flavouring, and they gathered enough to experiment with. The firm smooth tidal beach, with the ripples creaming up it in sibilant whispers tempted her to bare feet, and she handed him her shoes and splashed along as joyously as a child. "It is a most delightful island," she said. "I do not think I would ever tire of it." "Oh, yes, you would. It is all just the same, you see. You can walk on and on like this and round the other side for forty or fifty miles, and every bit of it is just like the rest." "I think it is beautiful." "It gets monotonous in time. The only diversion is the pile of wreckage down yonder. That is constantly changing and growing." "And discovering more skeletons! It feels odd to think that I should have been one myself if you two had not happened to be here."