I looked at the girl in silent wonder, yes, and in admiration of her bronze and ivory beauty in the full flower of her glorious youth--and I thought of Joyce. I felt that it was like her to have fallen in love simply but passionately at the mere lifting of the finger of Fate. It was only another demonstration of the unfathomable mystery, or miracle, which love is. Joyce was lucky, indeed favored of the gods, to have touched the spring in this girl's heart which no other man could reach, and by the rarest of chances--her coming out to this remote corner of the world. Lucky Joyce! I knew him slightly--a straightforward young fellow, very simple and whole-souled, enthusiastically absorbed in developing his rubber lands in Malduna. Miss Stanleigh remained lost in thought while her fingers toyed with the pendant of the chain that she wore. In the darkness I caught the glitter of a small gold cross. "Mr. Barnaby," she finally broke the silence, and paused. "I have decided to tell you something. This Mr. Farquharson was my husband." Again a silence fell, heavy and prolonged, in which I sat as if drugged by the night air that hung soft and perfumed about us. It seemed incredible that in that fleeting instant she had spoken at all. "I was young--and very foolish, I suppose." With that confession, spoken with simple dignity, she broke off again. Clearly, some knowledge of the past she deemed it necessary to impart to me. If she halted over her words, it was rather to dismiss what was irrelevant to the matter in hand, in which she sought my counsel. "I did not see him for four years--did not wish to.... And he vanished completely.... Four years!--just a welcome blank!" Her shoulders lifted and a little shiver went over her. "But even a blank like that can become unendurable. To be always dragging at a chain, and not knowing where it leads to...." Her hand slipped from the gold cross on her breast and fell to the other in her lap, which it clutched tightly. "Four years.... I tried to make myself believe that he was gone forever--was dead. It was wicked of me." My murmur of polite dissent led her to repeat her words. "Yes, and even worse than that. During the past month I have actually prayed that he might be dead.... I shall be punished for it." I ventured no rejoinder to these words of self-condemnation. Joyce, I reflected, mundanely, had clearly swept her off her feet in the ardor of their first meeting and instant love. "It must be a great relief to you," I murmured at length, "to have it all definitely settled at last." "If I could only feel that it was!" I turned in amazement, to see her leaning a little forward, her hands still tightly clasped in her lap, and her eyes fixed upon the distant horizon where the red spark of Lakalatcha's stertorous breathing flamed and died away. Her breast rose and fell, as if timed to the throbbing of that distant flare. "I want you to take me to that island--to-morrow."