“Your life—everything you have to face,” he answered. “How can you not see it—do you not see that _you_ have to live upon this island, too?” “I have not thought of it much,” I said. “I have been thinking of you.” “I know it,” he replied; “but I do not see how you are to bear it. I saw it all while I watched you sweep in with the boat—I saw all the pain and all the sorrow, and it was long before I made up my mind that it was not best to let you die.” I started, but he held me tight. “Yes,” he said, “and I fear that I chose wrongly. Is it not strange that a man who has seen what I have seen should still be bound by such chains—that what I knew would be best, I could not do, simply because you were my brother?” He must have felt my heart beating faster. “Listen to me,” he went on quickly, but still with his frightful quietness. “Listen to me while I try to tell you—what I can hardly bear to tell you. All the tragedy of being is summed up in such a situation as this of ours; I am as helpless before it as you are—both of us are as helpless as children.” I gazed at him again, and suddenly he caught me with the wild look of his eyes. He had no need to hold me with his hand. “Brother,” he said, “you must think this out for yourself, as you can: I cannot explain it to you—cannot explain anything about it. Suffice it to say that for twenty years I have lived here, and that I have fought a fight which no man has ever fought before, and seen what I believe no man has ever seen. Knowing you as I do, I know that you can by no possibility ever follow me. It is as if I had found the fourth dimension of space; it is as if I dwelt in a house through the walls of which you walked without seeing them. How you are to bear your life here, my dear, dear brother, I do not know; but the truth is merciless, and you must face it—you will have to live on this island all your days, I am sure; and you will have to live here _alone_!” A sudden shudder passed through me. “Daniel!” I gasped; it seemed to me that his eyes were on fire. “You mean, I suppose, that you are going away to some other part of the place—to another island?” “Whether I go to another place or not, what matters that? No, I shall not, I think; and rest assured that, whatever I do, I love you, my heart yearns for you, and all my tenderness and love are yours; but also that though you were with me, and held me in your arms four-and-twenty hours a day—yet all the time you would be alone.” I could find no word to say—I could scarcely think.