To satisfy her he ate a biscuit. Soon after she began to feel thirst, but she dared not ask for water. She knew he had none. He looked at her lying pale in his arms, and said with a smile that was not like a real smile, "It's a pity about the icebergs." She smiled and nodded, and lay still in the heat, watching the gulls, and thinking of ice. Some of the birds settled on the raft. One sat on the mast; another hovered at her knee, picking at crumbs. They played in the sun, rising and falling, and turned in her vision into a whirl of snowflakes, enormous snowflakes....She began to dream of snow, and her lips parted in the hope that some might fall upon her tongue. Presently she ceased to dream of snow....The boy looked down at her closed lids, and at her cheeks, as white as the breasts of the gulls. He could not bear to look long, and returned to his distances. It was night again. The circle of the sea was as smooth as silk. Pale light played over it like dreams and ghosts. The sky was a crowded arc of stars, millions of stars, she had never seen or imagined so many. They glittered, glittered restlessly, in an ecstasy that caught her spirit. She too was filled with millions of stars, through her senses they flashed and glittered--a delirium of stars in heaven and her heart.... "My boy!" "Yes, child." "Do you see the stars?" "Yes, child." "Do you feel them?" "Yes." "Oh, can't we die now?" She felt him move stiffly. "There's a ship! I'm certain of it now--I'm certain! Oh, if it were day!" The stars went on dazzling. She did not understand about the ship. Time moved forward, or stood still. For her the night was timeless. It was eternity. But things were happening outside in time and space. By what means they had been seen or had attracted attention she did not know. But the floating dreamlight and the shivering starlight on the sea were broken by a dark movement on the waveless waters. A boat was coming. For some time there had been shouting and calling in strange voices, one of them her boy's. But once again she hovered on the dim verge of consciousness. She had flown from the body he was painfully unbinding from his own. What he had suffered in holding it there so long she never knew. From leagues away she heard him whispering, "Child, can you help yourself a little?" And now for an instant her soul re-approached her body, and looked at him through the soft midnight of her eyes, and he saw in them such starlight as never was in sky or on sea. "Kiss me," said Helen. He kissed her. With a great effort she lifted herself and stood upright on the raft, swaying a little and holding by the mast. The boat was still a little distant. "Good-by, my boy." "Child--!" "Don't jump. You promised not to. You promised. But I can't come with you now. You must let me go."